拍品專文
Painted in 1991, Martin Kippenberger's Paris Bar is a vast, almost life-sized interior of his friend Michel Würthle's Paris Bar, the artist's favourite Berlin haunt which has become inextricably linked with his life and work. The incredible dimensions of this picture, a rare feature in Kippenberger's paintings, mean that we, the viewers, are thrust into the bar itself, thrust into the contemplation of the paintings on display within this painting, each of which is presented almost on its own original scale. The Paris Bar was a forum for Kippenberger to declare his views, hang his pictures, and exhibit his collection, and Paris Bar is itself a record of this, a huge testimony to his role as painter, entertainer, teacher, collector and curator.
Kippenberger himself felt at home in the Paris Bar, not least after his 1980 exchange with Würthle, his first art 'sale': free food and drink for himself and his companions for the rest of his life in exchange for his series of paintings, Uno di voi, un tedesco a Firenze. That series hung in the Paris Bar for a decade, from 1981 to 1991, having been hung by Kippenberger himself. After a decade, though, the restless artist arranged for a change. In Martin Kippenberger: Life and Work, the autobiographical notes reproduced at the back of most of the exhibition catalogues dedicated to Kippenberger, he wrote of 1991: 'Updates the art collection of the Paris Bar, Berlin, by adding works of artists including Louise Lawler, Laurie Simmons, Barbara Ess and Zoe Leonard' (Kippenberger, Life and Work, pp. 167-69, Krystof & Morgan (ed.), loc. cit. 2006, p. 169). Kippenberger curated an exhibition that year consisting of works from his own collection. The exhibited paintings formed a part of Kippenberger's own art collection. This new exhibition had itself been timed as a deliberately contrary gesture, coinciding with the Metropolis show at the Gropius House to which he had not been invited.
Depicting the left wall of the show, Paris Bar was created to immortalise his exhibition. As a further play on the nature of the exhibition, this picture itself would later hang elsewhere in the Paris Bar, visible on entry to the customers, a monumental, playful trompe-l'oeil extravaganza. This resulted in an intriguing reflexivity, one that was immortalised in its later manifestations.
For, as is so often the case with Kippenberger's works, Paris Bar soon began to take on a strange life of its own. As Würthle has said, 'It's a story which continues today and is still active.' When the present work was requested for the 1993 retrospective given to Kippenberger at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, he responded by creating a second painting of Paris Bar hanging on the wall, with more chairs and tables in the foreground. This picture-within-a-picture showing Paris Bar in the Paris Bar was therefore sent to Paris for an exhibition in which one of the key subjects was Kippenberger's time spent in Paris. As a further extension, that painting, which previously belonged to a German collector, now belongs to one of the most important French collectors and is currently hanging in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice.
This is an indication of the complex, slippery, often ungraspable type of playful conceptual somersaults that fill so much of Kippenberger's work. Even now, though, the story of this motif was far from over: the present work finally left the Paris Bar in 2004, Daniel Richter was asked to create a hommage to the painting and created his own trompe l'oeil version, which now sits in the Paris Bar. Other artists have subsequently paid similar tribute to both the Paris Bar and Kippenberger in variations of this theme.
These acts of appropriation had, at their heart, Kippenberger's own original exhibition. For Paris Bar shows Kippenberger indulging in a self-celebratory act of visual piracy, taking the works by other artists from his own collection and showing them as his own achievement. That many of the works represented come from the artists of the appropriation art movement adds another gleeful twist to this painting which, despite being deliberately deadpan in style when compared to many of Kippenberger's other paintings, shows the artist revelling in curiouser and curiouser examples of sleight-of-hand.
Paris Bar is a characteristically Kippenbergian celebration of, well, Kippenberger: he celebrates himself as artist, as collector and as curator. He is laying claim to a range of art historical precedents, from the café paintings of the Impressionists to Teniers' picture of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his gallery. At the same time, the exhibition prefigures his Museum of Modern Art Syros, the contemporary installation he made, with many artist friends, on the remote Greek island where he would spend his summers in Würthle's holiday home and which was also the location of the first station in his METRO-Net World Connection, his fictitious underground railway network. Perhaps Kippenberger is also commemorating his own vision as the mentor and therefore artistic predecessor to some of the artists whose works are shown within this Wunderkammer-like picture. Because of the profound connection between Kippenberger's life and his art, all of his works, and perhaps most of all Paris Bar, can be read as a form of self-portrait. Yet all of Kippenberger's self-portraits can be seen to throw into question the entire validity of pictorial representation, deliberately and tellingly concealing as much as they reveal.
Kippenberger himself felt at home in the Paris Bar, not least after his 1980 exchange with Würthle, his first art 'sale': free food and drink for himself and his companions for the rest of his life in exchange for his series of paintings, Uno di voi, un tedesco a Firenze. That series hung in the Paris Bar for a decade, from 1981 to 1991, having been hung by Kippenberger himself. After a decade, though, the restless artist arranged for a change. In Martin Kippenberger: Life and Work, the autobiographical notes reproduced at the back of most of the exhibition catalogues dedicated to Kippenberger, he wrote of 1991: 'Updates the art collection of the Paris Bar, Berlin, by adding works of artists including Louise Lawler, Laurie Simmons, Barbara Ess and Zoe Leonard' (Kippenberger, Life and Work, pp. 167-69, Krystof & Morgan (ed.), loc. cit. 2006, p. 169). Kippenberger curated an exhibition that year consisting of works from his own collection. The exhibited paintings formed a part of Kippenberger's own art collection. This new exhibition had itself been timed as a deliberately contrary gesture, coinciding with the Metropolis show at the Gropius House to which he had not been invited.
Depicting the left wall of the show, Paris Bar was created to immortalise his exhibition. As a further play on the nature of the exhibition, this picture itself would later hang elsewhere in the Paris Bar, visible on entry to the customers, a monumental, playful trompe-l'oeil extravaganza. This resulted in an intriguing reflexivity, one that was immortalised in its later manifestations.
For, as is so often the case with Kippenberger's works, Paris Bar soon began to take on a strange life of its own. As Würthle has said, 'It's a story which continues today and is still active.' When the present work was requested for the 1993 retrospective given to Kippenberger at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, he responded by creating a second painting of Paris Bar hanging on the wall, with more chairs and tables in the foreground. This picture-within-a-picture showing Paris Bar in the Paris Bar was therefore sent to Paris for an exhibition in which one of the key subjects was Kippenberger's time spent in Paris. As a further extension, that painting, which previously belonged to a German collector, now belongs to one of the most important French collectors and is currently hanging in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice.
This is an indication of the complex, slippery, often ungraspable type of playful conceptual somersaults that fill so much of Kippenberger's work. Even now, though, the story of this motif was far from over: the present work finally left the Paris Bar in 2004, Daniel Richter was asked to create a hommage to the painting and created his own trompe l'oeil version, which now sits in the Paris Bar. Other artists have subsequently paid similar tribute to both the Paris Bar and Kippenberger in variations of this theme.
These acts of appropriation had, at their heart, Kippenberger's own original exhibition. For Paris Bar shows Kippenberger indulging in a self-celebratory act of visual piracy, taking the works by other artists from his own collection and showing them as his own achievement. That many of the works represented come from the artists of the appropriation art movement adds another gleeful twist to this painting which, despite being deliberately deadpan in style when compared to many of Kippenberger's other paintings, shows the artist revelling in curiouser and curiouser examples of sleight-of-hand.
Paris Bar is a characteristically Kippenbergian celebration of, well, Kippenberger: he celebrates himself as artist, as collector and as curator. He is laying claim to a range of art historical precedents, from the café paintings of the Impressionists to Teniers' picture of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his gallery. At the same time, the exhibition prefigures his Museum of Modern Art Syros, the contemporary installation he made, with many artist friends, on the remote Greek island where he would spend his summers in Würthle's holiday home and which was also the location of the first station in his METRO-Net World Connection, his fictitious underground railway network. Perhaps Kippenberger is also commemorating his own vision as the mentor and therefore artistic predecessor to some of the artists whose works are shown within this Wunderkammer-like picture. Because of the profound connection between Kippenberger's life and his art, all of his works, and perhaps most of all Paris Bar, can be read as a form of self-portrait. Yet all of Kippenberger's self-portraits can be seen to throw into question the entire validity of pictorial representation, deliberately and tellingly concealing as much as they reveal.