Kippenberger

by Searls, Damion, Kippenberger, Susanne

  He, too, had gone to boarding school, was curious and enthusiastic, had genuine fun with art and artmaking, and (in curator Axel Huber’s words) “led his rational mind around on a long rubber leash.” A chain-smoker, a gentle person, a provocateur, a fun-loving and genuine person: Schlick was “right,” as Mathias Grilj wrote in an homage after Schlick’s death in 2005. Someone who patiently explained the art to exhibition visitors but “baroquely swept aside smart-asses with all their self-indulgent arrogance.” The qualities Grilj attributed to him were the same as the ones Martin valued: “Art, attitude, directness, humor, friendship, bravery, carefreeness, discipline, nitpicking, naiveté, expertise, attention, loyalty, craftiness, feeling, pride, solidarity, lust for life, openness, responsibility, sarcasm, rage, calculation, consistency, generosity, strictness, insight, and forbearance.” He and Martin spoke the same language and had the same sense of humor.

  Schlick also liked to work with his students, supported and promoted them, and constantly engaged with the role of the artist in his work. Above all, he was also a brilliant networker, “pulling all the strings in the Graz art scene” as a musician said of him—he was someone who brought people together. Schlick did on a regional level what Martin did internationally. For example, in the Eurostroll exhibition of 1989 that Martin put together with Schlick’s support, Martin’s friends Luis Claramunt, Sven-Åke Johansson, and Michael Krebber were shown together; the 1994 Forum Stadtpark exhibit Spoilsport showed Cosima von Bonin, Mike Kelley, Jutta Koether, Jeff Koons, Hans Küng, Otto Muehl, Chéri Samba, Jörg Schlick, Uli Strothjohann, Peter Weibel, and Heimo Zobernig.

  Elfie Semotan says that Martin “brought Schlick along” in more than just the literal sense when he took Schlick with him to America. Educated at an elite high school, Schlick knew Latin and ancient Greek but spoke only broken English—so badly that he avoided speaking it at all, since he felt that he could not carry on a serious conversation in it. Martin loved to play the big brother, showing someone around the great big world, while Jörg, who always seemed a little awkward with his big, heavy figure and gigantic glasses, found everything in St. Louis and San Francisco “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Martin was terribly disappointed when he wanted to take Jörg and his wife to Cipriani in New York and Jörg told him that he had already been to Cipriani, in Venice. Martin had never been to Venice.

  Schlick admired Martin very much—“worshipped” him, Johannes Wohnseifer says—and photographed him constantly. As a consultant for Forum Stadtpark, he made it possible for Martin to put on shows and publish books that would have been impossible elsewhere; he gave him a platform “to try things out,” as Peter Pakesch said, the same way Martin tried to get Schlick opportunities with his gallerists and curators. They greatly enjoyed collaborating, and Schlick was a proficient printer and bookmaker, so “it was fun for him to work on his subtle little delicacies and then paint the town red with Martin,” in Sabine Achleitner’s words. For example, there were Martin’s Canarybird books of “scribble drawings” (Achleitner’s term), which seemed to be printed on yellow paper but in fact the paper was white and the printing was yellow. Or the oversized book This Life Cannot Be the Excuse for the Next One : “it was totally insane, it wasn’t parchment paper but just printed to look like it, then all the text was printed backward on the reverse side of the page so you could feel the letters when you held the pages, and then the stamped leather cover . . .”

  They were allies, not least in the infamous Lord Jim Lodge. The critic and curator Marius Babias characterized the Lodge as a “mafia-like organization”—and that, Martin always felt, was the problem with Germany: its humorlessness. Jörg Schlick described the Lodge as an “anarchist utopia . . . the exact opposite of everything it was interpreted as.” Its members weren’t soldiers who followed the party line, but rather adventurous anarchists—that was the entrance requirement. Its motto was “Nobody Helps Nobody,” which turned the idea of a lodge like the Masons or Rotary or Elks upside down. “Inside the Lord Jim Lodge awaited absolutely nothing,” Daniela Jauk and Andreas Unterweger wrote, “no secret knowledge, no influential connections, not even, as Grilj’s motto revealed, assistance from the other members of the lodge. The only thing that had changed was that you used to be ‘outside’ and now you were ‘inside,’ you belonged.”

  The Lodge was founded in 1984 or 1985—no one is sure of the exact date any more—in a Graz liquor parlor (as they are called). We do know that the writer Wolfi Bauer came up with the idea for the Lodge and gave it its name because he was reading Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and felt that Conrad’s protagonist fit the Lodge members’ profile: Lord Jim was “a slightly suspect, but still idealistic character.” Bauer himself was a hero in Graz and to Martin: he and Martin shared the same sense of humor, and when they were together, they feted each other as geniuses. Martin invited Bauer to his events many times, in Cologne, Frankfurt, and Umhausen.

  The rules of the Lodge were simple. “Anyone who asks to be admitted will not be admitted. No one is asked whether or not they want to be admitted. No one, once admitted, is allowed to leave.” (And the members had to be able to hold their liquor.) Since the Lodge kept no records (“there was no paper, no leader, no fixed meeting place”), it is difficult to say how many members it had, but there were apparently thirty to fifty: artists, scholars, and adventurous spirits, including Martin and Albert Oehlen along with Bauer and Schlick. One thing was certain: the Lodge was for men only. The exclusion of women, Schlick explained, was meant to making fun of “the boy’s-club situation in the art business and in politics in general—we took it to an extreme.” To mollify any women who might be upset, Bauer declared them all to be Goddesses. Schlick later said, “If I had been opportunistic and wanted to come across well, I would definitely have advocated for the inclusion of women, but I didn’t want to take the easy route.” As a result, the group was vilified as a sexist, reactionary mafia.

  The Lodge became known outside Graz only because it adopted a logo that turned into an artistic concept and a magazine of the same name: Sun Breasts Hammer. The logo was born in a bar too, where Martin, Oehlen, Bauer, and Schlick were sitting together. It was shortly before their group exhibition at the Bleich-Rossi Gallery, Critical Oranges for the Digestive Village, and the poster had turned out too small for Martin’s liking—“we need a proper big one.” It was Schlick’s job to come up with a new poster, with the printer’s deadline was the next morning. Since hardly anyone ever came to the openings in Graz, due to the difficult transportation connections, Martin had to make sure that all their activities there would be perceived in the wider world anyway, hence the catalogs, invitations, and posters that had to be big.

  Schlick pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and the group drew the logo then and there: legend has it that Bauer was responsible for the breasts, Oehlen the hammer, and Martin the sun. Schlick put the logo on the poster and so it went out in the world, from which it would not soon disappear. Schlick wanted to make the logo as famous in the art world as Coca-Cola was in the world as a whole, so he made coins, rugs, and games with it and made it the central theme of his art for years, to an even greater degree than Martin, who likewise used the logo and motto over and over again in his later works. When Martin’s subway entrance was shown at documenta in 1997, with the logo at the center of the gate, Schlick felt that his goal had been reached; he put on one last exhibition with the logo and that was the icon’s last hurrah. Sun Breasts Hammer , the magazine, was retired as the “Central Organ of the Lord Jim Lodge” as well.

  Its short issues had appeared irregularly, with Schlick asking for images or texts from new artists every time. He published his own work and work by Cosima von Bonin, Michael Krebber, Albert Oehlen, Wolfgang Bauer, and Martin. The fifteenth and final issue was the “Ex-Bachelor Issue,” consisting solely of photographs from Martin’s wedding.

  It was also Schlick who introduced Martin to his gallerist Aki Bleich-Rossi, another unconventional figure obsessed with art
as collector and art-lover. He was a gentleman of the old school who kissed ladies’ hands and never let on how sick he was; he needed dialysis several times a week. Which meant, of course, that he could not often travel as a gallerist.

  Martin could go to “Bleichi” whenever he needed money—and he constantly needed money. Or the gallerist came to him. Martin would be at Innsbruck taking a cure and would issue a summons—“Bleichi, I need cashy”—and the gallerist and his wife would drive to see him and buy a few of his hotel-stationery drawings off him. Bleich-Rossi sometimes bought whole exhibitions as a package deal—“Martin liked that,” Peter Pakesch said—and thereby got works at a good price that he could then sell to people in Graz, who may not have been the most knowledgeable about art but who had the money to buy it.

  “First we admired Martin,” Isabella Bleich-Rossi said, “and then we loved him. Wherever he was, he shined, and he included us.” Their son Stefan (whom Martin called Benni, after the boy in the popular German soap opera Lindenstrasse ) was included in Martin’s work as well: Martin made a multiple for Stefan, Cold on Canvas, that his father then brought out. When he was older, though, Martin sometimes attacked Stefan so viciously in large groups that even the onlookers started crying on his behalf.

  Martin’s first solo show with Bleich-Rossi was called Journey to Jerusalem ; his last, Nada Arugula, took place in an apartment. After the gallerist’s death two years earlier, Isabella had had to shut the gallery, and she asked Martin to support her new beginning with a show. There was no question but that Martin would agree, and at the opening there were visitors lined up outside the door. It was a generous gesture with real consequences for the gallerist: “If Martin Kippenberger does it, others can follow suit.”

  Petra Schilcher of Artelier thought “Uh-oh!” the first time she met Martin: the tempo, the output, “he could get through five pieces in an hour.” But the Schilchers were the right place for him. Ralph Schilcher, who already ran a silkscreen shop in Graz, founded Artelier gallery and publishers with his wife in 1985, to give artists a place to play around. Along with the printshop, there were workshops for woodworking, metalworking, and plastic. Martin went wild and silkscreened everything he could get his hands on: corrugated tin, Bariano paper, wood, Canson Mi-Teintes paper, patio furniture. He made books (including Contents on Tour ) and had troughs, receptacles, and containers built and filled. His answer to the critics who criticized his overproduction was Yet Another Kippenberger 5x : a thick construction pipe filled with five silkscreen posters and sealed up with wooden covers.

  The workshop was a dream, and Ralph Schilcher was someone who could make Martin’s dreams come true, instantly grasping his intuitions and putting them into practice. “Martin produced artworks by the ton with Schilcher,” Peter Pakesch says, “all he had to do was sit in the pub, say how it should look, and it was done.” They often discussed only the necessary minimum over the phone, then Martin sent models or sketches from Cologne or wherever, and when he arrived he could get right to work, because everything was ready (and there was trouble if it wasn’t). “He wasn’t the type to futz around,” Petra Schilcher says, and she called her collaborations with him “highly professional,” with just one condition: “When he was there, there was no one else, we had to work only for him.”

  When they were done, he could do what he always liked to do: show his work on the spot, at once. “Production, publishing, and presentation” was his concept. He would show his editions at the Artelier Gallery in Graz, or at the Dependance in Frankfurt, which opened in 1990, or the Bleich-Rossi Gallery or steirischer herbst in Graz . Sometimes at more than one venue: following the example of Gilbert & George, who showed the same exhibition twice at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York, ten years apart, Martin did the same with a gap of one year, first at the steirischer herbst festival and then in the Artelier gallery.

  Martin also produced and showed his Elite 88 calendar at Artelier. He had been invited to open a disco in Vienna and had agreed, on the condition that he be put up in the best hotel. The organizers hadn’t realized that the opening was during Festival Week in Vienna, so all the hotels were booked up—Martin was eventually housed in Pension Elite, a pension that was anything but. It was a typical, dusty, depressing Vienna bed and breakfast where the sound of a vacuum cleaner woke Martin up in the morning. He bought himself a new pair of large white underpants, stood in front of the mirror, bulged out his already fat belly in a caricature of Picasso’s famous pose—a motif that Martin would later use in many self-portrait paintings and drawings—and took a series of pictures of himself. The resulting calendar’s mix of first-class and second-rate was typical Kippenberger: “The photographs might be blurry and grainy,” Petra Schilcher said, “but the paper had to be excellent and the date numbers perfectly printed in gold.” A calendar offered numerous possibilities for such finesses, for example that the pages could be printed on both sides, or the year could begin not with January but somewhere in the middle. Then, when the pages were shown in the gallery in Graz, with Martin’s fat belly and absolutely unsexy pulled-up underwear on display, he showed up at the opening “looking like a male model, long and lean,” Petra Schilcher says.

  His first edition with Schilcher was in 1987— 35 Mirror Babies, containing photographs of pasta and people along with various sayings (including one of his favorites: “What is your favorite minority, who do you envy the most?”) and the letter he’d sent to Manfred Schneckenburger, head of documenta, refusing to participate. His last Artelier edition was in 1996 and was another slap in the art world’s face—this time the Biennale, which hadn’t invited him at all and which he struck back at with humor. The photograph Martin’s wife Elfie Semotan had taken on their honeymoon in front of the German Biennale pavilion in Venice was silkscreened as a poster, with the caption “Biennale di Venezia 1996”—a year in which there was no Biennale.

  The Artelier was more than just a local home for Martin, it was a global one, and many of the artists he admired and valued did work there, including many of his friends: Thilo Heinzmann, Tobias Rehberger, Louise Lawler, Günther Förg, Heiner Blum, John Baldessari, Heimo Zobernig, Christian Attersee, Albert Oehlen, Franz West, and of course Jörg Schlick, who produced many of his Lord Jim works there.

  “He liked being at home,” Elisabeth Fiedler says. “He liked how Graz was like a village.” Fiedler, an art historian who was the first non-artist to be Schlick’s successor as the art consultant of Forum Stadtpark, was not only Martin’s good friend but at the center of another of Martin’s little families. Her house had an open door, and many artists visited; Fiedler’s husband, Peter, ran a piano shop in Graz, and Martin got along with their son, Stefan, as well. Martin usually got along well with children—they liked him because he took them seriously and clowned around with them and was more fun and rude than almost any other grown-up. (Or else they were afraid of him, or hated that he competed with them for their place in the family.) It wasn’t a matter of getting down on the floor to play with Legos or build sand castles, more like the other way around: he would have the children help him with his work. He talked to them the same way he talked to everybody, never in a special kid-voice; he liked talking to and working with children because they were what he always wanted artists to be: naive, playful, funny, rude, honest, open, genuine.

  Once when Martin was visiting the Fiedlers shortly before Christmas, he slipped Stefan some money, at which point his mother protested: “Martin, you shouldn’t do that.” He quickly said, “No, no, no, I want something in return—there’s a pile of all my catalogs, Stefan, go look at them and copy out the titles and write ‘very good’ after each one.” Elisabeth Fiedler went on: “So Stefan disappeared and got all the catalogs and did it. But he didn’t copy the titles, he described the pictures, with all his spelling mistakes. Stefan was dyslexic, too; he and Martin were a good pair.”

  A poor boy who is happy to finally be able to drink a

  Coca-Cola very good

  A
poor child looking at bread very good

  A car starting to skid very good

  An old wrecked attic very good

  A punishing hand in the cow stall very good

  Old and new shoes very good

  The devil and the angel very good

  Martin Kippenberger in front of a sunken city very good

  An egg from old times very good

  A negro and a boom box very good

  A beautiful house on the ocean very good

  A mother explaining something to a child very good

  A room vull of pictures very good

  A horse in a junk pile very good

  Lots of carpetstands walking around very good

  A duck in the water very good

  A tomcat and a woman very good

  A sailboat next to a cassle very good

  A chinese showing another chinese his tongue very good

  A hot stove very good

  A trout with its head cut off by a bottle opener very good

  Martin called it “art criticism” and later projected the nine-year-old’s scribbles onto a canvas and painted them, white on white: The White Paintings. He wanted, among other things, to bring the American artist Robert Ryman, once famous for his white paintings, “out of storage” (but then decided that Ryman was “just a kitschpeter” anyway). In the end, Martin didn’t hang the paintings on the wall, but embedded them in the wall, “so that you have the feeling there’s nothing in the room,” he said.

  No other city seemed to miss Martin as much as Graz. “After Martin’s death, it was a terrible time,” Elisabeth Fiedler said recently, “there was a very deep hole, because we all knew: it’s over. It was like that world had collapsed.” It was a world that has since lost many of its other inhabitants: Aki Bleich-Rossi, Jörg Schlick, Sabine Achleitner, Wolfgang Bauer, and Peter Fiedler have since died as well.