.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
'Such a comic: "I hate you - I hate you." Two people standing face to face with these knob noses, and: "I hate you - I hate you - I hate you." Totally fragmental... as I omitted the last picture, the point, which is the content of the joke... That's the only thing... well, hm [laughs] that's the joke after all, which lasts longer then. The one with the open end'
(Kippenberger, quoted in J. Koether, 'One Has to Be Able to Take It!' (interview with the artist), pp. 310-40, A. Goldstein (ed.), Martin
Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, exh. cat., Los Angeles, 2008, p. 320).
Painstakingly hand-painted on a large scale in a explosion of reds, greens and blues, Martin Kippenberger's Untitled shows a repeated image of two cartoon characters, one saying to the other, 'I hate you.' The recurring panels show Akbar and Jeff, two identical, ambiguous fez-wearing figures from Life in Hell, the early cult comic strip of Matt Groening, who later created The Simpsons. In Untitled, they have emerged from the black and white of the print press into a new kaleidoscopic spectrum. Over the top of this seemingly endless profession of hatred are a range of other images: one of the speech bubbles has been converted into an egg with a gleaming yolk, while to the left, more gesturally-applied oils which appear to deface the image in a typically Kippenbergian manner may also, with their yellow centre, take up this egg theme. At the centre of the composition, filling the gaps between some of the panels, is a green crucifix, while the entirety of the canvas is dominated by the spectral form of Fred the Frog, one of the artist's most celebrated alter egos's, shown crucified, the outline of one of his webbed feet and of his head the most visible aspects, rendered in a translucent lacquer. The reason he is so elusive is that the brown and yellow paints, as well as thick areas of lacquer, have been applied in such a way that they obliterate the image, a provocative act of desecration both to the picture and to its mock-religious theme. Untitled, which has appeared in several of the most important exhibitions and monographs dedicated to the artist, forms a part of Kippenberger's important Fred the Frog series. In Untitled, with its innovative range of techniques, combining appropriation, figuration, the gestural application of paint and the mirage-like image of the frog captured in varnish which has also accumulated in encrusted swathes on the surface, Kippenberger has presented a range of devices through a variety of techniques, dismantling and reassembling the entire nature of painting.
In Life in Hell, Groening's characters Akbar and Jeff, who Kippenberger has appropriated here, are sometimes presented as twins, sometimes as lovers, sometimes as a mixture of both. Groening's comic began as a cult underground publication but within a short time was syndicated to papers such as The Village Voice and remains in print to this day; Kippenberger may have come to know it in Venice, California, where he spent much of 1990 and where he created almost all of his Fred the Frog works. In Untitled, Kippenberger has taken one of Groening's strips and has reproduced it in a technique reminiscent of Andy Warhol's or Roy Lichtenstein's early cartoon works yet which is conspicuously hand-painted and multicoloured, deliberately bringing the viewer's attention to the process of its creation. Kippenberger has left out only the final frame, the punch-line, thus granting it an open-endedness and an absurdity that would have been dispelled by the original source. The repeated statement becomes Sisyphean, an existential cry, Kippenberger robbing the viewer of the punch-line and therefore gaining the last laugh.
In Untitled, Kippenberger uses this now-open-ended strip to summon a spirit of existential absurdity, to imply that the artist is mocking his audience, to imply that the viewer will attack the artist, and to introduce a crucial duality to the concept. This duality, with the inextricable similarity between Akbar and Jeff, can be seen as a representation of the relationship between the artist and the viewer, encapsulating Kippenberger's own declaration that 'Every artist is a human being.' It can also be interpreted on a more intimate level: just as Goethe's Faust declared that, 'Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast; the one struggles to separate itself from the other,' so too Kippenberger shows a dichotomy in the comically identical characters, one of whom claims to hate his mirror image so profoundly. This hints at the conflict within the artist himself, embodying his own personal problem with his status as an artist, which sometimes veered from self-criticism towards self-loathing, a notion embodied also in the deliberately mirage-like image of the crucified Fred.
Kippenberger has shown himself as Fred the Frog, exposed for all the world to see on the cross of his own art, his tongue lolling out, a self-sacrificing victim of his public. Dominated by the ghostly form of the frog on his cross, Untitled was exhibited the year after it was created in Kippenberger's playfully-titled show Fred the Frog rings the bell once a penny two a penny hot cross burns at the Galerie Max Hetzler. Fred the Frog was one of Kippenberger's key alter egos, extensions of his publicly-projected persona, alongside others such as the Eggman, Kafka and Pablo Picasso. The fact that Fred was on a cross introduced the old idea of the artist as a martyr, referred to in the recent exhibition of Paul Gauguin's work at Tate Modern. Kippenberger granted the concept a new verve with Fred the Frog: Fred was an absurd cartoonish character who recalls the Frog Prince from the tales of the Brothers Grimm, those great architects of German language and identity; he might be a prince needing a transformative kiss. In a deliberate act of artistic sacrilege, Kippenberger has placed his frog persona on the crucifix that is so central to Christian iconography. Kippenberger's problematic relationship with his status as an artist is encapsulated in the provocative image of the crucified, ridiculous frog, awaiting his release, be it from a princess or from a deity. This is a reflection of the reality, and the consequences, of being a Selbstdarsteller -a self-promoter. Kippenberger is placing himself on the front line as a target for vitriol, for a public who will say, 'I hate you - I hate you.' But at the same time, the artist, using appropriation and desecration as some of the tools in his arsenal, is answering his audience in exactly the same terms.
The repetition of the image of Akbar and Jeff in Untitled - which in the original Life in Hell strip was an innovative economy allowing Groening to produce his strip speedily and devote himself to his burgeoning television career - introduces a composition that recalls Andy Warhol's sometimes off-set, repeated pictures of, say, suicides, car crashes and celebrities, a relationship that is emphasised by Kippenberger's removal of the final, punch-line frame. Warhol, Lichtenstein and the history of Pop Art are also invoked by the use of a comic strip as a source image, which may also reveal Kippenberger reacting to the Joke Paintings that Richard Prince was painting during this period, of which he would doubtless have been aware as he was living in the United States at the time. However, where the Pop Artists were elevating such products of their contemporary cultural landscape as comic strips and superstars to the realm of art, Kippenberger appears to be reversing the process, enacting a complex transformation by which he is levelling the artistic and cultural playing field. Kippenberger is confronting the hierarchy of the art world by deflating and demoting his own works and those of his fellows. After all, 'If everything is good, then nothing is good any more' (Kippenberger, quoted in P.M. Lee, '"If Everything Is Good, then Nothing Is Good Any More": Martin Kippenberger, Conceptual Art, and a Problem of Distinction', pp. 185-213, loc. cit., p. 187). This, then, is a form of artistic self-sacrifice, a notion that is emphasised by the fact that Kippenberger has included the cross and the crucified frog within his composition.
This theme of crucifixion in Untitled probes the transformative power of the artist, as does the egg motif that recurs on its surface; so too does the presence of Fred, an anthropomorphic fairytale cursed prince awaiting his miraculous metamorphosis. Several parallel devices have thus been introduced: Christ was transformed through his death as a mortal; the frog was transformed through a kiss; the egg is transformed when it hatches or is cooked. So too, Groening's comic strip has been transformed, appropriated by Kippenberger and granted a new meaning and purpose. Untitled is a complex work that functions on many levels with its direct confrontation with the viewers, a reversal of art historical precedent, its depiction of the artist as a splattered, crucified frog, exposed to an audience who are building him up to bring him down. This picture thus irreverently manages to combine many of the touchstones of his work, in terms of his own personal iconography and in terms of his iconoclastic interaction with the history and status of art, and of artists themselves.
(Kippenberger, quoted in J. Koether, 'One Has to Be Able to Take It!' (interview with the artist), pp. 310-40, A. Goldstein (ed.), Martin
Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, exh. cat., Los Angeles, 2008, p. 320).
Painstakingly hand-painted on a large scale in a explosion of reds, greens and blues, Martin Kippenberger's Untitled shows a repeated image of two cartoon characters, one saying to the other, 'I hate you.' The recurring panels show Akbar and Jeff, two identical, ambiguous fez-wearing figures from Life in Hell, the early cult comic strip of Matt Groening, who later created The Simpsons. In Untitled, they have emerged from the black and white of the print press into a new kaleidoscopic spectrum. Over the top of this seemingly endless profession of hatred are a range of other images: one of the speech bubbles has been converted into an egg with a gleaming yolk, while to the left, more gesturally-applied oils which appear to deface the image in a typically Kippenbergian manner may also, with their yellow centre, take up this egg theme. At the centre of the composition, filling the gaps between some of the panels, is a green crucifix, while the entirety of the canvas is dominated by the spectral form of Fred the Frog, one of the artist's most celebrated alter egos's, shown crucified, the outline of one of his webbed feet and of his head the most visible aspects, rendered in a translucent lacquer. The reason he is so elusive is that the brown and yellow paints, as well as thick areas of lacquer, have been applied in such a way that they obliterate the image, a provocative act of desecration both to the picture and to its mock-religious theme. Untitled, which has appeared in several of the most important exhibitions and monographs dedicated to the artist, forms a part of Kippenberger's important Fred the Frog series. In Untitled, with its innovative range of techniques, combining appropriation, figuration, the gestural application of paint and the mirage-like image of the frog captured in varnish which has also accumulated in encrusted swathes on the surface, Kippenberger has presented a range of devices through a variety of techniques, dismantling and reassembling the entire nature of painting.
In Life in Hell, Groening's characters Akbar and Jeff, who Kippenberger has appropriated here, are sometimes presented as twins, sometimes as lovers, sometimes as a mixture of both. Groening's comic began as a cult underground publication but within a short time was syndicated to papers such as The Village Voice and remains in print to this day; Kippenberger may have come to know it in Venice, California, where he spent much of 1990 and where he created almost all of his Fred the Frog works. In Untitled, Kippenberger has taken one of Groening's strips and has reproduced it in a technique reminiscent of Andy Warhol's or Roy Lichtenstein's early cartoon works yet which is conspicuously hand-painted and multicoloured, deliberately bringing the viewer's attention to the process of its creation. Kippenberger has left out only the final frame, the punch-line, thus granting it an open-endedness and an absurdity that would have been dispelled by the original source. The repeated statement becomes Sisyphean, an existential cry, Kippenberger robbing the viewer of the punch-line and therefore gaining the last laugh.
In Untitled, Kippenberger uses this now-open-ended strip to summon a spirit of existential absurdity, to imply that the artist is mocking his audience, to imply that the viewer will attack the artist, and to introduce a crucial duality to the concept. This duality, with the inextricable similarity between Akbar and Jeff, can be seen as a representation of the relationship between the artist and the viewer, encapsulating Kippenberger's own declaration that 'Every artist is a human being.' It can also be interpreted on a more intimate level: just as Goethe's Faust declared that, 'Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast; the one struggles to separate itself from the other,' so too Kippenberger shows a dichotomy in the comically identical characters, one of whom claims to hate his mirror image so profoundly. This hints at the conflict within the artist himself, embodying his own personal problem with his status as an artist, which sometimes veered from self-criticism towards self-loathing, a notion embodied also in the deliberately mirage-like image of the crucified Fred.
Kippenberger has shown himself as Fred the Frog, exposed for all the world to see on the cross of his own art, his tongue lolling out, a self-sacrificing victim of his public. Dominated by the ghostly form of the frog on his cross, Untitled was exhibited the year after it was created in Kippenberger's playfully-titled show Fred the Frog rings the bell once a penny two a penny hot cross burns at the Galerie Max Hetzler. Fred the Frog was one of Kippenberger's key alter egos, extensions of his publicly-projected persona, alongside others such as the Eggman, Kafka and Pablo Picasso. The fact that Fred was on a cross introduced the old idea of the artist as a martyr, referred to in the recent exhibition of Paul Gauguin's work at Tate Modern. Kippenberger granted the concept a new verve with Fred the Frog: Fred was an absurd cartoonish character who recalls the Frog Prince from the tales of the Brothers Grimm, those great architects of German language and identity; he might be a prince needing a transformative kiss. In a deliberate act of artistic sacrilege, Kippenberger has placed his frog persona on the crucifix that is so central to Christian iconography. Kippenberger's problematic relationship with his status as an artist is encapsulated in the provocative image of the crucified, ridiculous frog, awaiting his release, be it from a princess or from a deity. This is a reflection of the reality, and the consequences, of being a Selbstdarsteller -a self-promoter. Kippenberger is placing himself on the front line as a target for vitriol, for a public who will say, 'I hate you - I hate you.' But at the same time, the artist, using appropriation and desecration as some of the tools in his arsenal, is answering his audience in exactly the same terms.
The repetition of the image of Akbar and Jeff in Untitled - which in the original Life in Hell strip was an innovative economy allowing Groening to produce his strip speedily and devote himself to his burgeoning television career - introduces a composition that recalls Andy Warhol's sometimes off-set, repeated pictures of, say, suicides, car crashes and celebrities, a relationship that is emphasised by Kippenberger's removal of the final, punch-line frame. Warhol, Lichtenstein and the history of Pop Art are also invoked by the use of a comic strip as a source image, which may also reveal Kippenberger reacting to the Joke Paintings that Richard Prince was painting during this period, of which he would doubtless have been aware as he was living in the United States at the time. However, where the Pop Artists were elevating such products of their contemporary cultural landscape as comic strips and superstars to the realm of art, Kippenberger appears to be reversing the process, enacting a complex transformation by which he is levelling the artistic and cultural playing field. Kippenberger is confronting the hierarchy of the art world by deflating and demoting his own works and those of his fellows. After all, 'If everything is good, then nothing is good any more' (Kippenberger, quoted in P.M. Lee, '"If Everything Is Good, then Nothing Is Good Any More": Martin Kippenberger, Conceptual Art, and a Problem of Distinction', pp. 185-213, loc. cit., p. 187). This, then, is a form of artistic self-sacrifice, a notion that is emphasised by the fact that Kippenberger has included the cross and the crucified frog within his composition.
This theme of crucifixion in Untitled probes the transformative power of the artist, as does the egg motif that recurs on its surface; so too does the presence of Fred, an anthropomorphic fairytale cursed prince awaiting his miraculous metamorphosis. Several parallel devices have thus been introduced: Christ was transformed through his death as a mortal; the frog was transformed through a kiss; the egg is transformed when it hatches or is cooked. So too, Groening's comic strip has been transformed, appropriated by Kippenberger and granted a new meaning and purpose. Untitled is a complex work that functions on many levels with its direct confrontation with the viewers, a reversal of art historical precedent, its depiction of the artist as a splattered, crucified frog, exposed to an audience who are building him up to bring him down. This picture thus irreverently manages to combine many of the touchstones of his work, in terms of his own personal iconography and in terms of his iconoclastic interaction with the history and status of art, and of artists themselves.