TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Martin Kippenberger spoke and wrote in a very, very irregular German and my translations in this book keep its idiosyncracies: crazy spelling, made-up words, and so on. (Translations of quotes by other people likewise use nonstandard English to represent nonstandard German.) I would like to acknowledge and thank the translators who have tackled Kippenbergerese before me, in particular the uncredited translators of the chronology “Martin Kippenberger: Life and Work” (in Kippenberger, Taschen 1997, reprinted in Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, MOCA 2008, pp. 349–52); the uncredited translator of Kippenberger’s 1991 interview with Jutta Koether (in Martin Kippenberger: I Had a Vision, SFMOMA 1991, excerpts reprinted in Problem Perspective, pp. 310–340); Micah Magee (translator of the 1991 Artfan interview published in English as Picture a Moon, Shining in the Sky: Conversation with Martin Kippenberger, Starship 2007, rev. ed. 2010); and Ishbel Flett (translator of the catalog section of Uwe Koch, Annotated Catalogue Raisonné of the Books of Martin Kippenberger: 1977–1997, D.A.P. 2003). I consulted these translations and used them where possible, sometimes modified.
The titles of Kippenberger’s works, exhibitions, and books present a different challenge, with their concise poetry, humor, and cultural references. Many of the titles have been translated before, sometimes in multiple ways, not always capturing their meaning and nuance; some of the titles were originally in English, and in those cases I kept them as Kippenberger wrote them (for example, One Flew Over the Canarybirds Nest or The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika,” not translating/correcting “Happy End” to “Happy Ending”). My thanks to Gisela Capitain, Regina Fiorito, and Lisa Franzen, from Galerie Gisela Capitain and the Martin Kippenberger Estate, for their help with translating the titles; I also found Diedrich Diederichsen’s essay “The Poor Man’s Sports Car Descending a Staircase: Kippenberger as Sculptor” as translated by James Gussen ( Problem Perspective, pp. 118–56) helpful for several titles.
All the footnotes in this book are by the translator, not the author.
INTRODUCTION
MY BIG BROTHER
He was my big brother. My protector, my ally, my hero. Whenever I got into a fight with my sister, I only had to yell “Maaaartin, Bine is...” and there’d be something, a “Cologne Cathedral” (Martin yanking poor Bine up by the ears until she was dizzy) or an Indian burn. He wrote me letters like this from his boarding school in the Black Forest: “Dear Sanni, How are you? I think about you every day. Are you baking cake yet? Don’t snack so much, you’ll get a tummy ache. Do you brush your tiny teeth every night? I hope so.” He was ten at the time; I was six. Now I’m 54, ten years older than my brother was when he died.
It was on March 7, 1997. Almost exactly the same people came to Burgenland for his funeral as had celebrated his marriage with Elfie Semotan there a year before.
He was so looking forward to 1997—it was going to be his year, his big breakthrough at last. A “Respective” in the Geneva Museum in January, then a few days later the opening of The Eggman and His Outriggers in Mönchengladbach, his first solo show at a German museum since 1986. In March, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize and an exhibition of his Raft of the Medusa cycle at the Berlin Academy of Arts, then documenta in June, and the sculpture exhibition in Münster—but he didn’t get to see those. Hepatitis, cirrhosis, liver cancer: six weeks after the diagnosis, he was dead.
Is it possible, advisable, permissible to write about someone so close to you? My first reaction, when asked if I could imagine writing about my brother, was No! No no no.
Yes.
Martin Kippenberger is a public figure. A pop star, a brand name, a classic contemporary artist. He is written about, spoken of, and judged. Newspapers and magazines that kept deadly silent at best about him while he was alive now praise him. And he—who let nothing escape comment—can no longer say anything. Night and day (especially night), he used to manage his image as an artist, but now he has lost control. That is what he was most afraid of.
He shows up as a character in novels, there is a hotel suite named after him, a play, a restaurant, a guinea pig (at least one). You can buy him as a notepad. Ben Becker dedicated a song to him: “Kippy” on the album We’re Taking Off. His early death has turned him into a legend, especially for younger people—a kind of James Dean of contemporary German art. A devil for some, a god for others. The picture of the human being is fading away.
The picture we have of the artist, on the other hand, seems to be growing clearer and clearer. His work began to be taken seriously only after his death; now that it is finished, it can be viewed in peace, and connections within his body of work can be discovered and explored. Martin produced at such a pace that there was barely time to glance at his work when he was living. Now he has platforms he could once only dream of: the Venice Biennale, the Tate in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., the Museo Picasso in Malaga, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But posthumous fame was exactly what he wasn’t interested in. He wanted to experience and enjoy the success that he, in his opinion, deserved. He believed in himself from the beginning, in himself and in art.
People terrified of him while he was alive now say that Martin is no longer here to get in the way of his art. The shock of his sudden death was a wake-up call for those who had only seen the humor, not the seriousness behind it—and who couldn’t even laugh at that. Zdenek Felix, former director of the Hamburg Deichtorhallen, holds the humorlessness of German museum directors partly responsible for the fact that, between 1986 and 1997, Martin had solo shows at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hirshhorn in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, and Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, but not one in a German museum. “He was too early,” says Tanja Grunert, the gallerist, “Martin was always too early.”
There are many different pictures of Martin Kippenberger, both public and private. He drew and painted lots of them himself, constantly had his picture taken, and put himself on display in bars and museums, at exhibitions and parties. He was often described as cynical, but he was a great moralist and humanist. In Berlin in the late seventies he was known as an impresario of punk and hard rock in the Kreuzberg club S.O.36, but in his studio he preferred to listen to the oldies: Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra. “My Way.”
He is sometimes described as an autodidact, but he learned his craft at the Academy of Arts in Hamburg, and broke off his studies only when they got to be too boring. No, he wasn’t an autodidact; he was a self-made man. He created himself rather than waiting to be discovered. “He was his own best salesman,” said the gallerist Bärbel Grässlin. But not everyone was buying: “He was not a good person,” the obituary in taz cruelly said.
For Martin everything, even his name, expressed his vision. As a boy, he was always allowed to ride on St. Martin’s horse during the St. Martin’s Day processions, and like the saint, he shared everything he had. Money, success, and influence; his sense of fun, his art, and his worries. When things were going badly for him, he got mean.
He knew how to hit home. “He saw through people like an x-ray,” a girlfriend says, and found all their weak points. He attacked the bad and defended the good the way a lioness guards her cubs. There were people who hated him and people who loved him in the burning depths of their hearts—the innkeeper’s daughter in Austria no less than the rich collector. Ever since Martin’s death, people have quoted his line: “I work hard so that people can say: Kippenberger was a good time.” And he usually was a good time, but woe to anyone around him when he wasn’t.
The image of the jolly entertainer masks the shadows underneath, and the fact that he worked himself to death creating this image and his work. “When you face an abyss,” he wrote on one of his pictures, “don’t be surprised to find you can fly.” His wild artist’s life seems thrilling from a distance to fans. He himself called it “insanely strenuous to be on the road with absolutely no private life.” Still, that’s what he did a lot of the time—lived as fast as a driver on the autobahn. Then, for a few days or a week, he would stay with friends or acquaintances who made him feel looked after and cared for. He wouldn’t constantly have to show off, but could show his weak side too, and be quiet.
In