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Lot Essay
‘He drew a lot in that apartment, very precise drawings with coloured pencils, working all night long for months at a time ... What did he draw? Himself (“I sit for portraits of myself – big freehand pencil drawings”), friends, and family’
–Susanne Kippenberger
Held in the same private collection for over four decades, Ohne Titel (Untitled) (1975- 1976) is a rare and important early self-portrait by Martin Kippenberger. After finishing his studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Hamburg, Kippenberger spent around two years sharing an apartment and studio space with an older artist, who was the illustrator of a number of iconic krautrock and prog album covers in the 1970s; he gave the owner this work as a parting gift when he moved to Berlin in late 1977. Kippenberger’s outsize personality made a splash in the freewheeling, experimental West German commune scene, and his interest in krautrock (he was a great dancer, and enjoyed posing for photographs for album designs) prefigured his later ventures into Berlin’s musical underground, where he briefly managed the infamous punk club SO36. In Ohne Titel Kippenberger’s dark reddish hair, which he dyed with henna at the time, is swept behind his ears. His skin is a spectral blue-green. He rears up with a wild, wide-eyed grin, raising his hands in cartoonish threat as if ready to pounce. Each of his fingers is gloved with a condom. The work displays Kippenberger’s exquisite talent as a draughtsman – a skill which would largely be sidelined in favour of prolific painting over the following decade, until he embarked in 1987 on his intimate series of ‘Hotel Drawings’ – and sets out the blend of raucous humour and penetrating self-performance that would remain central to his ensuing practice.
Unlike in much of his later self-portraiture, in Ohne Titel Kippenberger revels in his good looks, of which he was particularly proud in his twenties. In 1976 he would travel to Florence in search of acting work, aiming to capitalise on his resemblance to Visconti’s famously handsome muse Helmut Berger, for whom he was sometimes mistaken. He also makes prominent display of his teeth, which had been damaged by his amphetamine use and recently fixed – the owner recalls that Kippenberger’s ‘enlightened’ doctor mother had first sent him to Hamburg in 1972 for rehabilitation. Even as he celebrates himself, however, Kippenberger cuts an enigmatic figure. The work can be seen to both advertise and make a joke out of his own libido. He ironises any vanity with his ghoulish palette, and the absurdist provocation of his condom-clad fingers. Where the artist’s hands in the Germanic self-portrait tradition are often charged with symbolism – an expressive lineage that runs through the works of Otto Dix and Egon Schiele, and can be traced back to the masterpieces of Albrecht Dürer – Kippenberger hides behind imaginatively repurposed contraception. This image offers no profound Old Masterly insight into an artistic psyche: Kippenberger is instead pulling a face, making a vaudeville mockery of the self-portrait’s usual prerogatives. Standing at the dawn of his meteoric career, Ohne Titel exhibits the riotous, intelligent blend of controversy-baiting and deconstruction of self that would run throughout Kippenberger’s life and work.
Self-portraits were at the core of Kippenberger’s artistic project. As Martin Prinzhorn writes, ‘the “self” is only a quotation inside art which has a constructed meaning inside psychology. The paintings of Kippenberger make an illusion out of the concept of self-perception, which we only invent in order to be able to say something about us and others’ (M. Prinzhorn, in Martin Kippenberger, exh. cat. Max Hetzler, Cologne 1992, p. 59). In the Lieber Maler, Male Mir (Dear Painter, Paint Me) series of 1981, Kippenberger would employ a film poster company to make paintings from his photographs, removing his own hand from the process and styling himself as an airbrushed star. In the iconic, desolate and hilarious self-portraits from 1988, at the peak of his fame, he would paint himself as an overweight and abject alcoholic, clowning the image of Picasso in white underwear as the genius king of painting. In Ohne Titel, we see an earlier exploration of the self-portrait’s capacity for revelation and masking. Kippenberger portrays himself playing the role of a certain amped-up character – the charismatic, unhinged jester and lothario – but that role is also a version of his true self. Even at this stage, he was blurring the lines between art and life. Kippenberger’s way of being took its toll, and he would die from alcohol-related liver cancer at the age of 44. Ohne Titel captures the unique, electrifying energy and anarchic humour that propelled the artist through his career of scandal and success, but it also, like much of his work, seems tinged with an awareness of death. With his face and hands emerging from ghostly emptiness, his self-portrait stands not only as a vivid record of his character, but also as a poignant image of his ultimate transience. ‘It may sound hackneyed to say that Kippenberger’s life was an extended, alcohol-fuelled performance piece,’ writes Roberta Smith, ‘but in a sense it was – at once self-indulgent, self-destructive and, oddly, selfless, almost self-sacrificing. He enacted the artistic drive in the extreme, flirted consistently with failure, and in his manic, exaggerated, remorseless way, exposed the human vulnerability behind all great art’ (R. Smith, ‘Ruling the Roost: The Artist Martin Kippenberger Through the Eyes of His Sister’, New York Times, 17 February 2012).
–Susanne Kippenberger
Held in the same private collection for over four decades, Ohne Titel (Untitled) (1975- 1976) is a rare and important early self-portrait by Martin Kippenberger. After finishing his studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Hamburg, Kippenberger spent around two years sharing an apartment and studio space with an older artist, who was the illustrator of a number of iconic krautrock and prog album covers in the 1970s; he gave the owner this work as a parting gift when he moved to Berlin in late 1977. Kippenberger’s outsize personality made a splash in the freewheeling, experimental West German commune scene, and his interest in krautrock (he was a great dancer, and enjoyed posing for photographs for album designs) prefigured his later ventures into Berlin’s musical underground, where he briefly managed the infamous punk club SO36. In Ohne Titel Kippenberger’s dark reddish hair, which he dyed with henna at the time, is swept behind his ears. His skin is a spectral blue-green. He rears up with a wild, wide-eyed grin, raising his hands in cartoonish threat as if ready to pounce. Each of his fingers is gloved with a condom. The work displays Kippenberger’s exquisite talent as a draughtsman – a skill which would largely be sidelined in favour of prolific painting over the following decade, until he embarked in 1987 on his intimate series of ‘Hotel Drawings’ – and sets out the blend of raucous humour and penetrating self-performance that would remain central to his ensuing practice.
Unlike in much of his later self-portraiture, in Ohne Titel Kippenberger revels in his good looks, of which he was particularly proud in his twenties. In 1976 he would travel to Florence in search of acting work, aiming to capitalise on his resemblance to Visconti’s famously handsome muse Helmut Berger, for whom he was sometimes mistaken. He also makes prominent display of his teeth, which had been damaged by his amphetamine use and recently fixed – the owner recalls that Kippenberger’s ‘enlightened’ doctor mother had first sent him to Hamburg in 1972 for rehabilitation. Even as he celebrates himself, however, Kippenberger cuts an enigmatic figure. The work can be seen to both advertise and make a joke out of his own libido. He ironises any vanity with his ghoulish palette, and the absurdist provocation of his condom-clad fingers. Where the artist’s hands in the Germanic self-portrait tradition are often charged with symbolism – an expressive lineage that runs through the works of Otto Dix and Egon Schiele, and can be traced back to the masterpieces of Albrecht Dürer – Kippenberger hides behind imaginatively repurposed contraception. This image offers no profound Old Masterly insight into an artistic psyche: Kippenberger is instead pulling a face, making a vaudeville mockery of the self-portrait’s usual prerogatives. Standing at the dawn of his meteoric career, Ohne Titel exhibits the riotous, intelligent blend of controversy-baiting and deconstruction of self that would run throughout Kippenberger’s life and work.
Self-portraits were at the core of Kippenberger’s artistic project. As Martin Prinzhorn writes, ‘the “self” is only a quotation inside art which has a constructed meaning inside psychology. The paintings of Kippenberger make an illusion out of the concept of self-perception, which we only invent in order to be able to say something about us and others’ (M. Prinzhorn, in Martin Kippenberger, exh. cat. Max Hetzler, Cologne 1992, p. 59). In the Lieber Maler, Male Mir (Dear Painter, Paint Me) series of 1981, Kippenberger would employ a film poster company to make paintings from his photographs, removing his own hand from the process and styling himself as an airbrushed star. In the iconic, desolate and hilarious self-portraits from 1988, at the peak of his fame, he would paint himself as an overweight and abject alcoholic, clowning the image of Picasso in white underwear as the genius king of painting. In Ohne Titel, we see an earlier exploration of the self-portrait’s capacity for revelation and masking. Kippenberger portrays himself playing the role of a certain amped-up character – the charismatic, unhinged jester and lothario – but that role is also a version of his true self. Even at this stage, he was blurring the lines between art and life. Kippenberger’s way of being took its toll, and he would die from alcohol-related liver cancer at the age of 44. Ohne Titel captures the unique, electrifying energy and anarchic humour that propelled the artist through his career of scandal and success, but it also, like much of his work, seems tinged with an awareness of death. With his face and hands emerging from ghostly emptiness, his self-portrait stands not only as a vivid record of his character, but also as a poignant image of his ultimate transience. ‘It may sound hackneyed to say that Kippenberger’s life was an extended, alcohol-fuelled performance piece,’ writes Roberta Smith, ‘but in a sense it was – at once self-indulgent, self-destructive and, oddly, selfless, almost self-sacrificing. He enacted the artistic drive in the extreme, flirted consistently with failure, and in his manic, exaggerated, remorseless way, exposed the human vulnerability behind all great art’ (R. Smith, ‘Ruling the Roost: The Artist Martin Kippenberger Through the Eyes of His Sister’, New York Times, 17 February 2012).