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Lot Essay
Born in Dortmund, Germany, in 1953, Martin Kippenberger created a uniquely influential and complex body of work from the mid-1970s until his untimely death in 1997 at the age of 44. His prolific and multifaceted output-which encompassed painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and graphic art-is centered on the role of the artist in society and within the art system more specifically, and is defined by its critical and often humorous engagement with the conventions of artistic practice. Kippenberger's works are layered in references: while the artist cited from cultural, political, and art historical influences, his work is also self-referential in its allusions to his other works and to his own life.
Lamps occupy a central motif within Kippenberger's oeuvre. In 1988, the artist created the first of his "drunken street lamps," a group of forlorn, bent, drooping lanterns, some partially submerged within walls, of which an example was included in the documenta IX in 1992. This recurring motif of the "drunken" lantern also appears in numerous paintings by the artist.
Constructed from casting resin with smoking paraphernalia incorporated inside, Kippenblinky is a life-sized, working floor lamp. Its triangular scales lend it a decorative appearance, which is enhanced by the various colorful cigarette boxes and smoker's utensils within it. The design simultaneously evokes opulence anddecay, luxury and tackiness, expensiveness and cheapness, and further draws associations to kitsch--which also featured prominently in the works of Sigmar Polke, Kippenberger's German contemporary (Kippenberger was an avid collector of holiday souvenirs).
As the title indicates, there is a strong autobiographical dimension to this work, its first part being an obvious reference to the artist's surname and its latter part denoting a lamp. Kippenberger was a fervent smoker, and the smoking paraphernalia merged within the resin bestows a totemic value to the tall lamp, as if a personification of the artist known for his many self-portraits.
Kippenblinky is part of a series of lamps which Kippenberger created for his now legendary 1991 installation Tiefes Kehlchen (Deep Throat) in Vienna. Set up within an auxiliary construction tunnel for the underground railway system, the installation was presented as part of a series of long-term projects by the Austrian capital to promote art in public spaces. Kippenberger chose his title from the popular porn movie Deep Throat, which in 1972 was one of the first-ever broadly distributed films of its kind. Known for its sensational subject matter as much as for its blatant clich and sometimes farcical elements (shots of fireworks and exploding bombs as analogies for sexual climax), its reception was marred by the female lead's insistence that she was forced to act against her will and her subsequent feministinspired opposition to pornography.
Kippenberger presented slide projections from the film in a separate room at the end of the long, dark construction tunnel, and only permitted visitors to glimpse the action through a small peephole. The rest of the installation was constructed of individual works, which in addition to the Kippenblinkys included Jetzt geh ich in den Birkenwald, denn meine Pillen wirken bald (Now I Am Going into the Big Birch Wood, My Pills Will Soon Start Doing Me Good), a series of birch stems without their crowns; Heavy Burschi, a dumpster with destroyed paintings; and an eerie, resin-cast model of the artist on a motorized vehicle driving down a oneway track (Electromobile). Illumination was provided by construction-site lighting as well as the Kippenblinkys. Although it only lasted two months, the importance of Tiefes Kehlchen within Kippenberger's oeuvre is undisputed, and its location in a tunnel between two subway stations presaged the artist's elaborate Metro-Net, an imagined global underground system for which Kippenberger designed various real-size entrances.
Part of a generation of German artists born in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Kippenberger's multifaceted oeuvre is at once uniquely personal and widely representative of a divisive political and cultural landscape. Kippenblinky offers an exceptional testament of the anti-monumental tendency deployed throughout the artist's work and reflects, on a more general level, his search for untraditional and defiant means of expression and contexts for presenting artworks both within and outside of social conventions. Acutely aware of his own position as an artist, Kippenberger gave voice to a prevalent mood of fragmentation, restlessness, and self-scrutiny, which only gained more urgency in his work following the German unification. As he noted just a few years before his untimely death, "I always work for the present moment because of this short interval of time you have as an individual. I use all means to build something that can stand on its own, that speaks for itself."1
1 Martin Kippenberger, cited in "One Has To Be Able To Take It! Excerpts from an interview with Martin Kippenberger by Jutta Koether, November 1990 - May 1991," in Ann Goldstein, Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective. Exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008), p. 313.
Lamps occupy a central motif within Kippenberger's oeuvre. In 1988, the artist created the first of his "drunken street lamps," a group of forlorn, bent, drooping lanterns, some partially submerged within walls, of which an example was included in the documenta IX in 1992. This recurring motif of the "drunken" lantern also appears in numerous paintings by the artist.
Constructed from casting resin with smoking paraphernalia incorporated inside, Kippenblinky is a life-sized, working floor lamp. Its triangular scales lend it a decorative appearance, which is enhanced by the various colorful cigarette boxes and smoker's utensils within it. The design simultaneously evokes opulence anddecay, luxury and tackiness, expensiveness and cheapness, and further draws associations to kitsch--which also featured prominently in the works of Sigmar Polke, Kippenberger's German contemporary (Kippenberger was an avid collector of holiday souvenirs).
As the title indicates, there is a strong autobiographical dimension to this work, its first part being an obvious reference to the artist's surname and its latter part denoting a lamp. Kippenberger was a fervent smoker, and the smoking paraphernalia merged within the resin bestows a totemic value to the tall lamp, as if a personification of the artist known for his many self-portraits.
Kippenblinky is part of a series of lamps which Kippenberger created for his now legendary 1991 installation Tiefes Kehlchen (Deep Throat) in Vienna. Set up within an auxiliary construction tunnel for the underground railway system, the installation was presented as part of a series of long-term projects by the Austrian capital to promote art in public spaces. Kippenberger chose his title from the popular porn movie Deep Throat, which in 1972 was one of the first-ever broadly distributed films of its kind. Known for its sensational subject matter as much as for its blatant clich and sometimes farcical elements (shots of fireworks and exploding bombs as analogies for sexual climax), its reception was marred by the female lead's insistence that she was forced to act against her will and her subsequent feministinspired opposition to pornography.
Kippenberger presented slide projections from the film in a separate room at the end of the long, dark construction tunnel, and only permitted visitors to glimpse the action through a small peephole. The rest of the installation was constructed of individual works, which in addition to the Kippenblinkys included Jetzt geh ich in den Birkenwald, denn meine Pillen wirken bald (Now I Am Going into the Big Birch Wood, My Pills Will Soon Start Doing Me Good), a series of birch stems without their crowns; Heavy Burschi, a dumpster with destroyed paintings; and an eerie, resin-cast model of the artist on a motorized vehicle driving down a oneway track (Electromobile). Illumination was provided by construction-site lighting as well as the Kippenblinkys. Although it only lasted two months, the importance of Tiefes Kehlchen within Kippenberger's oeuvre is undisputed, and its location in a tunnel between two subway stations presaged the artist's elaborate Metro-Net, an imagined global underground system for which Kippenberger designed various real-size entrances.
Part of a generation of German artists born in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Kippenberger's multifaceted oeuvre is at once uniquely personal and widely representative of a divisive political and cultural landscape. Kippenblinky offers an exceptional testament of the anti-monumental tendency deployed throughout the artist's work and reflects, on a more general level, his search for untraditional and defiant means of expression and contexts for presenting artworks both within and outside of social conventions. Acutely aware of his own position as an artist, Kippenberger gave voice to a prevalent mood of fragmentation, restlessness, and self-scrutiny, which only gained more urgency in his work following the German unification. As he noted just a few years before his untimely death, "I always work for the present moment because of this short interval of time you have as an individual. I use all means to build something that can stand on its own, that speaks for itself."