Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives and airbrushes, can be used; the final work is called a painting. Painting is an important form in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, narration, or abstraction. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, abstract, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by religious art. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha or other images of Eastern religious origin. In art, the term painting describes the result of the action; the support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, canvas, glass, pottery, leaf and concrete, the painting may incorporate multiple other materials including sand, paper, gold leaf, as well as objects.
Color, made up of hue and value, dispersed over a surface is the essence of painting, just as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music. Color is subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West; some painters, theoreticians and scientists, including Goethe and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent; the word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalized register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as F or C♯. For a painter, color is not divided into basic and derived colors. Painters deal with pigments, so "blue" for a painter can be any of the blues: phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, Cobalt blue, so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not speaking, means of painting.
Colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, because of this, the perception of a painting is subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to "light" in painting, "shades" to dynamics, "coloration" is to painting as the specific timbre of musical instruments is to music; these elements do not form a melody of themselves. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting to include, as one example, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense; some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Anselm Kiefer. There is a growing community of artists who use computers to "paint" color onto a digital "canvas" using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, many others; these images can be printed onto traditional canvas. Jean Metzinger's mosaic-like Divisionist technique had its parallel in literature. I make a kind of chromatic versification and for syllables I use strokes which, variable in quantity, cannot differ in dimension without modifying the rhythm of a pictorial phraseology destined to translate the diverse emotions aroused by nature.
Rhythm, for artists such as Piet Mondrian, is important in painting as it is in music. If one defines rhythm as "a pause incorporated into a sequence" there can be rhythm in paintings; these pauses allow creative force to intervene and add new creations—form, coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information is of crucial importance in the given work of art, it directly affects the aesthetic value of that work; this is because the aesthetic value is functionality dependent, i.e. the freedom of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other forms of "techne", directly contributes to the aesthetic value. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Wassily Kandinsky used musical terms to identify his works. Kandinsky theorized that "music is the ultimate teacher," and subsequently embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions.
Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that, yellow is the color of middle C on a brassy trumpet. In 1871 the young Kandinsky learned to play the cello. Kandinsky's stage design for a performance of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" illustrates his "synaesthetic" concept of a universal correspondence of forms and musical sounds. Music d
Franz West
Franz West was an Austrian artist. He is best known for his unconventional objects and sculptures and furniture work which require an involvement of the audience. West was born on 16 February 1947, his father was a coal dealer, his mother a dentist who took her son with her on art-viewing trips to Italy. West did not begin to study art until he was 26, between 1977 and 1983, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Bruno Gironcoli. West began making drawings around 1970 before moving on to painted collages incorporating magazine images that showed the influence of Pop Art, his art practice started as a reaction to the Viennese Actionism movement has been exhibited in museums and galleries for more than three decades. Over the last 20 years he had a regular presence in big expositions like Documenta and the Venice Biennale. West's artwork is made out of plaster, papier-mâché, polyester and other, ordinary materials, he started to produce paintings, but turned to collages, portable sculptures called "Adaptives" or "Fitting Pieces", environments and furniture – "welded metal chairs and divans, some minimally padded and upholstered in raw linen."
For his early sculptures, West covered ordinary objects—bottles, machine parts, pieces of furniture and other, unidentifiable things—with gauze and plaster, producing "lumpy, dirty-white objects". In the late 1990s, West turned to large-scale lacquered aluminum pieces, the first inspired by the forms of Viennese sausages, as well as the shapes of the Adaptives. With their monochrome colors and irregular patchwork surfaces, these works were meant for sitting and lying; the Baltimore Museum of Art with help from former Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Darsie Alexander, hosted the first "comprehensive survey" to been done in the U. S. of Franz West's artwork which contained his latest artwork designed for the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Igo and the Id. – which "consists of two configurations of rumpled, ribbon-like loops rising some 20 feet high. One is bright pink, the other neatly painted in blocks of green, yellow and orange. Both have round stools projecting from the lower ends of the loops."For the season 2009/2010 in the Vienna State Opera Franz West designed a large scale picture as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress.
Throughout his career, West engaged in collaborations with other artists, such as conceptual Artist Bernhard Cella, conceptual artist Douglas Gordon, musician Fred Jellinek, furniture maker Mathis Esterhazy, the artist Tamuna Sirbiladze. For another exhibition in 2012, West collaborated with fellow artist Anselm Reyle on a series of furniture sculptures. Around 1980 West started to create "plaster objects a few feet long, meant to be placed over the face, worn around the waist or held in the crook of the neck. Although they suggest masks and props for the commedia dell'arte, their shapes are ambiguous: no matter how figurative and sexual Mr. West's objects may be, they remain abstract; the pieces can be carried like a partner in an enraptured solipsistic dance. They leave the wearer looking both protected and trapped." His friend Reinhard Priessnitz called these "Passstücke", rendered into English as "Fitting pieces". 1987 Wiener Secession, Vienna 1988 Kunsthalle Bern, Bern 1988 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 1988 P.
S.1, New York 1990 Venice Biennale, Austrian Pavilion, Venice 1991 Villa Arson, Nice 1994 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 1996 Museum moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 20er Haus, Vienna 1997 Fundaçao de Serralves, Porto 1997 Museum of Modern Art, New York 1998 Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum, Antwerpen 2000 Museum für Neue Kunst - ZKM Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe 2000 Renaissance Society, Chicago 2001 Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien, Vienna 2001 Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 2002 Musée d'Art Contemporain, Marseille 2002/03 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA 2003 Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz 2003 Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 2007 Werkstadt Graz, Graz 2008 Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien, Vienna 2008 Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore 2009 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 2009 Fondation Beyeler, Basel 2009/10 Museum Ludwig, Cologne 2010 Museo MADRE, Neapel 2010/11 Kunsthaus Graz, Graz 2013 MUMOK, Vienna 2013 Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh 2013 MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main 2014 Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, USA 2014 The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield 2016 21er Haus, Vienna 2017 Viva Arte Viva, The 57th Venice Biennale, Italy 2018/19 Centre Georges Pompidou and Tate, London 1986: Otto Mauer Prize 1988: City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts 1993: Sculpture Award at the Generali Foundation 1998: Wolfgang-Hahn-Preis, Museum Ludwig, Cologne 1993: Skulpturenpreis der Generali Foundation 1986: Otto Mauer Prize, Vienna 2011: Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale 2011: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art West was married to the Georgian artist Tamuna Sirbiladze, with whom he had two children.
West was represented by Gagosian Gallery, Galerie Meyer Kainer and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, until his death in 2012. David Zwirner had represented West in the US until 2001. At Frieze Art Fair in 2011, West curated the Gagosian Gallery's booth. A portrait of West made by Rudolf Stingel sold for a price of more than $500,000. West's estate continues to be represented by Gagosian Gallery; the non-profit Franz West Archive was established by West, Eva Badura-Triska and others in 1997. In 2012
Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton Malletier referred to as Louis Vuitton, or shortened to LV, is a French fashion house and luxury retail company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton. The label's LV monogram appears on most of its products, ranging from luxury trunks and leather goods to ready-to-wear, watches, accessories and books. Louis Vuitton is one of the world's leading international fashion houses. For six consecutive years, Louis Vuitton was named the world's most valuable luxury brand, its 2012 valuation was US$25.9 billion. The 2013 valuation of the brand was US$28.4 billion with revenue of US$9.4 billion. The company operates in 50 countries with more than 460 stores worldwide; the Louis Vuitton label was founded by Vuitton in 1854 on Rue Neuve des Capucines in France. Louis Vuitton had observed that the HJ Cave Osilite trunk could be stacked. In 1858, Vuitton introduced his flat-topped trunks with trianon canvas, making them lightweight and airtight. Before the introduction of Vuitton's trunks, rounded-top trunks were used to promote water runoff, thus could not be stacked.
It was Vuitton's gray Trianon canvas flat trunk that allowed the ability to stack with ease for voyages. Many other luggage makers imitated LV's design; the company participated in the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris. In 1871, Ōyama Iwao became the first recorded Japanese customer, ordering a set of luggage while in Paris as a military observer during the Franco-Prussian War. To protect against the duplication of his look, Vuitton changed the Trianon design to a beige and brown stripes design in 1876. By 1885, the company opened its first store in London on Oxford Street. Soon thereafter, due to the continuing imitation of his look, in 1888, Vuitton created the Damier Canvas pattern, which bore a logo that reads "marque L. Vuitton déposée", which translates into "L. Vuitton registered trademark". In 1892, Louis Vuitton died, the company's management passed to his son. After the death of his father, Georges Vuitton began a campaign to build the company into a worldwide corporation, exhibiting the company's products at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.
In 1896, the company made the worldwide patents on it. Its graphic symbols, including quatrefoils and flowers, were based on the trend of using Japanese Mon designs in the late Victorian era; the patents proved to be successful in stopping counterfeiting. In this same year, Georges traveled to the United States, where he toured cities such as New York and Chicago, selling Vuitton products. In 1901, the Louis Vuitton Company introduced the Steamer Bag, a smaller piece of luggage designed to be kept inside Vuitton luggage trunks. By 1913, the Louis Vuitton Building opened on the Champs-Elysees, it was the largest travel-goods store in the world at the time. Stores opened in New York, Washington, London and Buenos Aires as World War I began. Afterwards, in 1930, the Keepall bag was introduced. During 1932, LV introduced the Noé bag; this bag was made for champagne vintners to transport bottles. Soon thereafter, the Louis Vuitton Speedy bag was introduced. In 1936 Georges Vuitton died, his son, Gaston-Louis Vuitton, assumed control of the company.
During World War II, Louis Vuitton collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of France. The French book Louis Vuitton, A French Saga, authored by French journalist Stephanie Bonvicini and published by Paris-based Editions Fayard tells how members of the Vuitton family aided the puppet government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain and increased their wealth from their business affairs with the Germans; the family set up a factory dedicated to producing artifacts glorifying Pétain, including more than 2,500 busts. Caroline Babulle, a spokeswoman for the publisher, said: "They have not contested anything in the book, but they are trying to bury it by pretending it doesn't exist." Responding to the book's release in 2004, a spokesman for LVMH said: "This is ancient history. The book covers a period when it was family-run and long before it became part of LVMH. We are diverse and all the things a modern company should be." An LVMH spokesman told the satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaîné: "We don't deny the facts, but regrettably the author has exaggerated the Vichy episode.
We haven't put any pressure on anyone. If the journalists want to censor themselves that suits us fine." That publication was the only French periodical to mention the book, LVMH is the country's biggest advertiser in the press. During this period, Louis Vuitton began to incorporate leather into most of its products, which ranged from small purses and wallets to larger pieces of luggage. In order to broaden its line, the company revamped its signature Monogram Canvas in 1959 to make it more supple, allowing it to be used for purses and wallets, it is believed that in the 1920s, counterfeiting returned as a greater issue to continue on into the 21st century. In 1966, the Papillon was launched. By 1977 with annual revenue up to 70 million Francs. A year the label opened its first stores in Japan: in Tokyo and Osaka. In 1983, the company joined with America's Cup to form the Louis Vuitton Cup, a preliminary competition for the yacht race. Louis Vuitton expanded its presence in Asia with the opening of a store in Taipei, Taiwan in 1983 and Seoul, South Korea in 1984.
In the following
Dan Graham
Daniel "Dan" Graham is an American artist and curator. Graham grew up in New Jersey. In 1964 he began directing the John Daniels Gallery in New York, where he put on Sol LeWitt's first one-man show, in groups shows, exhibited works of Donald Judd, Dara Birnbaum, Dan Flavin and Robert Smithson. Like these artists, Graham considered himself a writer-artist, publishing essays and reviews on rock music, Dwight D. Eisenhower's paintings, Dean Martin's television show, his earliest work dealt with the magazine page, predating but associated with Conceptual art. His work focuses on cultural phenomena, incorporates photography, performance art and mirror structures, he works in New York. Dan Graham was born in Urbana, the son of a chemist and an educational psychologist; when he was 3, Graham moved from Illinois to Winfield Township, New Jersey, to nearby Westfield when he was 14. He is self-educated. During his teens, reading included Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, the literary critic Leslie Fiedler and the French Nouveau Roman writers.
He wanted to be a writer, loved rock music which he wrote about critically and because he couldn't afford art supplies his early art took the form of magazine "articles". Graham began his art career in 1964, at the age of 22, when he founded the John Daniels Gallery in New York, he worked there until 1965. During his time at the gallery, he exhibited works by minimalist artists such as Carl André, Sol LeWitt—LeWitt's first solo gallery show, Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, Dan Flavin and Ward Jackson. In the past thirty years, Dan Graham has proved himself to be a wide-ranging artist, his work consists of performance art, video and photography. Few of Graham's works have been exhibited in the United States. In fact, the only major work commissioned in the U. S. in the last decade was the Rooftop Urban Park Project, in which he designed the piece Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube and Video Salon. Some other commissions in the U. S. are Yin/Yang at MIT, the labyrinth at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, at Middlebury College, in Madison Square Park.
Graham's work was always based within conceptual art practice. Early examples were photographs and numerological sequences printed in magazines, for example Figurative and Schema. With the latter Graham draws on the actual physical structure of the magazine in which it is printed for the content of the work itself; as such the same work changes according to its physical/structural location within the world. His early breakthrough-work however was a series of magazine-style photographs with text, Homes for America, which counterpoints the monotonous and alienating effect of 1960's housing developments with their supposed desirability and the physical-geometry of a printed article. Other works include Detumescence. After this Graham broadened his conceptual practice development with performance, film and sculpture including Rock My Religion and Performer/Audience/Mirror, his installations such as Public Space/Two Audiences or Yesterday/Today further inspired his move to the indoor and outdoor pavilions he most designs.
His many conceptual pavilions including Two Way Mirror with Hedge Labyrinth and Two Way Mirror and Open Wood Screen Triangular Pavilion have increased his popularity as an artist. Dan Graham's first sculpture building project was Café Bravo at Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. After a lecture at the Berlin University of the Arts, Klaus Biesenbach invited Dan Graham to conceive the pavilion for Kunst-Werke, which Biesenbach founded, he assisted Graham in the realization of the project. In addition to his visual works, he has published a large array of speculative writing. In Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer's publication Pep Talk in 2009, Graham gave "Artists' and Architects' Work That Influenced Me": Michael Asher, Larry Bell, Itsuko Hasegawa, LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mangold, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Kazuo Shinohara, Michael Snow, Mies van der Rohe and Robert Venturi. Writer Brian Wallis has said that Graham’s works “displayed a profound faith in the idea of the present, sought to comprehend post-war American culture through imaginative new forms of analytical investigation, facto-graphic reportage, quasi-scientific mappings of space/time relationships.”
Graham's work has been influenced by the social change of the Civil Rights Movement, The Vietnam War, the Women's liberation movement as well as many other cultural changes. These prolific events and changes in history affected minimalist movements. Like LeWitt, Morris and Flavin, Graham has worked at the intersection of minimalism and conceptual art. Graham prints, his prints of numeric sequences, words and graphics reflect his minimalist qualities. His works have become conceptual, examine the relationships between interior space, exterior space, the perception of the viewer when anticipated boundaries are changed. Soon after he left the John Daniels Gallery, Dan Graham started a series of photographs which started in the sixties and continues into the present. Of his magazine work, Graham said, There was this whole idea of defeating monetary value in the air in the ’60s, so my idea was to put things in magazine pages where they’d be disposable with no value. And, a hybrid because the work was a combination of art criticism
Genoa
Genoa is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits; as of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of Genoa, which in 2015 became the Metropolitan City of Genoa, counted 855,834 resident persons. Over 1.5 million people live in the wider metropolitan area stretching along the Italian Riviera. Located on the Gulf of Genoa in the Ligurian Sea, Genoa has been one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean: it is the busiest in Italy and in the Mediterranean Sea and twelfth-busiest in the European Union. Genoa has been nicknamed la Superba due to its glorious impressive landmarks. Part of the old town of Genoa was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006 as Genoa: Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli; the city's rich cultural history in art and cuisine allowed it to become the 2004 European Capital of Culture. It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Andrea Doria, Niccolò Paganini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Renzo Piano and Grimaldo Canella, founder of the House of Grimaldi, among others.
Genoa, which forms the southern corner of the Milan-Turin-Genoa industrial triangle of Northwest Italy, is one of the country's major economic centers. The city has hosted massive shipyards and steelworks since the 19th century, its solid financial sector dates back to the Middle Ages; the Bank of Saint George, founded in 1407, is among the oldest in the world and has played an important role in the city's prosperity since the middle of the 15th century. Today a number of leading Italian companies are based in the city, including Fincantieri, Selex ES, Ansaldo Energia, Ansaldo STS, Edoardo Raffinerie Garrone, Piaggio Aerospace, Mediterranean Shipping Company and Costa Cruises; the flag of Genoa is a red cross on a white field. The English Monarch paid an annual tribute to the Doge of Genoa for this privilege." The patron saint of Genoa was Saint Lawrence until at least 958, but the Genoese transferred their allegiance to Saint George at some point during the 11th or 12th century, most with the rising popularity of the military saint during the Crusades.
Genoa had a banner displaying a cross since at latest 1218 as early as 1113. But the cross banner was not associated with the saint. A depiction of this flag is shown in the Genoese annals under the year 1227; the Genoese flag with the red cross was used alongside this "Saint George's flag", from at least 1218, known as the insignia cruxata comunis Janue. The saint's flag was the city's main war flag, but the cross flag was used alongside it in the 1240s; the Saint George's flag remained the main flag of Genoa at least until the 1280s. The flag now known as the "St. George's Cross" seems to have replaced it as Genoa's main flag at some point during the 14th century; the Book of Knowledge of All Kingdoms shows it, inscribed with the word iustiçia, described as: And the lord of this place has as his ensign a white pennant with a red cross. At the top it is inscribed in this manner; the city of Genoa covers an area of 243 square kilometres between the Ligurian Sea and the Apennine Mountains. The city stretches along the coast for about 30 kilometres from the neighbourhood of Voltri to Nervi, for 10 kilometres from the coast to the north along the valleys Polcevera and Bisagno.
The territory of Genoa is popularly divided into 5 main zones: the centre, the west, the east, the Polcevera and the Bisagno Valley. Genoa is adjacent to two popular Ligurian vacation spots: Portofino. In the metropolitan area of Genoa lies Aveto Natural Regional Park. Genoa has a humid subtropical climate in the Köppen climate classification, since only one summer month has less than 40 millimetres of rainfall, preventing it from being classified as oceanic or Mediterranean; the average yearly temperature is around 19 °C during 13 °C at night. In the coldest months: December and February, the average temperature is 12 °C during the day and 6 °C at night. In the warmest months – July and August – the average temperature is 27.5 °C during the day and 21 °C at night. The daily temperature range is limited, with an average range of about 6 °C between high and low temperatures. Genoa sees significant moderation from the sea, in stark contrast to areas behind the Ligurian mountains such as Parma, where summers are hotter and winters are quite cold.
Annually, the average 2.9 of nights recorded temperatures of ≤0 °C. The coldest temperature recorded was −8 °C on the night of February 2012. Average annual number of days with temperatures of ≥30 °C is about 8, average four days in July and August. Average annual temperature of the sea is 17.5 °C, from 13 °C in the period January–March to 25 °C in August. In the period from June to October, the average sea temperature exceeds
Martin Kippenberger
Martin Kippenberger was a German artist and sculptor known for his prolific output in a wide range of styles and media, superfiction as well as his provocative and hard-drinking public persona. Kippenberger was "widely regarded as one of the most talented German artists of his generation," according to Roberta Smith of the New York Times, he was at the center of a generation of German enfants terribles including Albert Oehlen, Markus Oehlen, Werner Büttner, Georg Herold, Dieter Göls, Günther Förg. Kippenberger was born in Dortmund in 1953, the only boy in a family with five children, with two elder and two younger sisters, his father was director of his mother a dermatologist. When Kippenberger's mother was killed by a pallet falling off a truck, he inherited enough money to live on, he studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, where Sigmar Polke, despite not teaching him directly, influenced him. After a sojourn in Florence, where he had his first solo show in 1977, he settled in Berlin in 1978.
In that year he founded Kippenberger's Office with Gisela Capitain, mounting exhibitions of his own art and that of his friends. During that same period, Kippenberger became business director of SO36, a performance and music space, started a punk band called the Grugas, which recorded a single called Luxus with Christine Hahn and Eric Mitchell. Leaving Berlin for a long visit to Paris, Kippenberger spent the early 1980s as an active member of the Cologne art scene. In Cologne, as elsewhere, Kippenberger did not limit himself to producing works of art. "Martin was tremendously committed to the gallery's artists," Max Hetzler said. The Vienna gallerist Peter Pakesch thinks Kippenberger did an enormous amount for the Hetzler Gallery's success in his double role "as clown and strategist... Max without Martin's strategy would have been unimaginable in the early years." According to artist Jutta Koether, Kippenberger "was the one who brought movement to life so that it became known outside Cologne."In 1984, he became a founding member of the Lord Jim Lodge.
After moving to Los Angeles in late 1989, he bought a 35% share in ownership of the Italian restaurant Capri in Venice, Los Angeles. He stayed in Sankt Georgen im Schwarzwald as a guest of the Grässlin family of art collectors from 1980 to 1981, on and off from 1991 to 1994, in order to work but to recover from his excessive life. In his last years he taught at the Kassel Art Academy. Martin Kippenberger died at age 44 from liver cancer at the Vienna General Hospital. Kippenberger’s refusal to adopt a specific style and medium in which to disseminate his images resulted in an prolific and varied oeuvre which includes an amalgam of sculpture, works on paper, installations and ephemera. Throughout the 1980s, Kippenberger’s artwork underwent periods of strong political reflection. During a trip to Brazil in 1986, Kippenberger bought a gas station by the sea in Salvador de Bahia and renamed it the Martin Bormann Gas Station. With the fictionally acquired gas station, Kippenberger gave Martin Bormann a camouflage address and the possibility of an income in exile.
Accused of neo-Nazi attitudes by German critic Wolfgang Max Faust, he made several life-size, dressed mannequin sculptures of himself, called Martin, ab in die Ecke und schäm Dich, placed facing the wall. Kippenberger felt that he was working in the face of a'perceived death of painting' and his art reflects his struggle with the concept that, at the turn of the millennium, it was impossible to produce anything original or authentic. Blass vor Neid steht er vor deiner Tür, for instance, comprises twenty-one individual canvases shown together as one work, but each canvas has a separate title and there is no consistent style. In 1987 he integrated a 1972, all-gray abstract painting by Gerhard Richter, which he himself had purchased, into the top of a coffee table. For the photorealist paintings from a series titled Lieber Maler, Male Mir or Dear Painter, Paint for Me, Kippenberger hired a commercial painter named Werner to make them and signed them Werner Kippenberger. Untitled make formal reference to debates around language-based conceptual art as a critique of the ‘empty’ white cube gallery space.
In a first series of works alluding to Picasso that were to follow in 1988, Kippenberger took this project further, looking to the ultimate Modern icon as a contemporary foil. Restaging a well-known photograph by David Douglas Duncan of Picasso standing in a'puffed-up' state of undress on the steps of Château Vauvenargues in 1962 Kippenberger was parodying his famous antecedent, playfully subverting the machismo associated with the genre of self-portraiture. First adopted as a motif in his 1988 series of self-portraits undertaken in Carmona, Kippenberger depicted himself with white briefs pulled up high over his exaggerated belly, as he turned to examine himself in a mirror. Kippenberger made the first of Laterne sculptures in 1988, a year that he spent living in Seville and Madrid in Spain; this work, Laterne an Betrunkene has become well known through its exhibition at the 1988 Venice Biennale. The original motif of the lamp sculptures derived in part from the photographs that filled Kippenberger's 1988 artist's book, "Psychobuildings".
In 1989, Kippenberger and fellow artist Jeff
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