Martin Kippenberger

Holtermann Fine Art, London (acquired from the Estate of Martin Kippenberger)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Essen, Folkwang Museum, Wahrheit ist Arbeit. Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, 1984, p. 39, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the red of the glasses and orange tonalities in the feet are brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals three small networks of very thin and stable hairline drying cracks to the thickest areas of impasto at the centre of the top left quadrant, the middle of the composition, and towards the centre of the right edge, respectively. There is a very thin and stable vertical drying crack running between the bottom left and right quadrants, near the centre of the composition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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Executed in 1983, Das Erfrischt (or in English, “it refreshes”) showcases Kippenberger’s idiosyncratic approach to figural painting, and evinces his career-defining ability to inject serious statements with the playful, vulgar, and louche. Das Erfrischt was prestigiously included in the seminal 1984 exhibition Wahrheit ist Arbeit (Truth is Work) at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, which gathered works by Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Werner Büttner. Wahrheit ist Arbeit recognised Kippenberger’s already pivotal creative output, and remains considered “one of the most important exhibitions of the 1980s” (Ann Goldstein, ‘The Problem Perspective’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, 2008-09, p.37). Rife with humour and thought-provoking historical allusion, Das Erfrischt additionally expresses Kippenberger’s lifelong obsession with performance and self-portraiture across a protean array of guises.

Das Erfrischt was intended to refresh and revitalise contemporary discourse surrounding German history by valorising the licentious burlesque culture of early-1900s Berlin. Its theatrical palette, lively title, and cross-dressing figure all recall the underground culture of late Wilhelmine Germany, which flourished in Berlin clubs until after the First World War. Donning oriental pantaloons, a shimmering blouse, and a bright red butterfly mask, the dancer of Das Erfrischt strongly resembles Kippenberger himself in drag, a form of self-portraiture that he frequently revisited, as in the painting Untitled (1996) where he models an Issey Miyake dress. The present work shows Kippenberger assume a stylised posture of mock-seduction, recalling the promotional photographic tableau and elaborate costumes of iconic Berlin performers Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste. Embodying Kippenberger’s inimitable levity, a small caricatured dog establishes a light-hearted tone, recalling the parodic vulgarisation of lofty material that defines the spirit of burlesque and – undeniably – of Kippenberger’s own practice.

Ingeniously enhancing the aura of performative excess, Kippenberger’s handling of paint in Das Erfrischt closely emulates the powdery texture and saturated colours of stage makeup. Beyond the figure’s heavy and ridiculously uneven maquillage, the diffuse (and finely clumpy) layers of pink, purple, and turquoise pigments underlying the grey background resemble successive applications of eye shadow, just as the saturated black modeling mimics Egyptian kohl. Formally, Das Erfrischt finds inspiration in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s pre-war renderings of venal sexuality in Berlin, characterised by blocky arrangements of exotic colours capturing the transgressive ecstasy of a modern metropolis. The present painting’s title, emblazoned upon a graphic assemblage of geometric shapes, aligns Das Erfrischt’s composition closely with mass cultural products such as posters and pamphlets, which in the early Twentieth Century were the visual output of Europe’s emerging urban entertainment.

The intermingling of performance, visual art, and music – and the existence of alternative subcultures to provide non-academic forums for such experimentation – was of paramount importance to Kippenberger throughout his career. In 1978, five years before Das Erfrischt was painted, Kippenberger began managing the legendary club S.O. 36, located in the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin where Punk and New Wave were then thriving. Alongside a program of concerts, films, and plays, Kippenberger himself frequently performed with his band Luxus, often notoriously commandeering the microphone from other scheduled acts for unprompted speeches or dramatic outbursts. Adopting a model of artistic production established by his revolutionary predecessor Joseph Beuys, who had an “indelible and defining impact” upon Kippenberger’s generation, he pursued democratic, performance-based, and socio-politically engaged art-making (Ibid., p.42). Crucially, however, Kippenberger expanded Beuysian paradigms to enthusiastically embrace failure, the gauche, and the louche, compulsively casting himself in unattractive or unusual roles; it is utterly unsurprising that the figure in Das Erfrischt should resemble Kippenberger, a compulsive seeker of underdog guises.

During the 1980s, German artists such Anselm Kiefer achieved recognition for the serious depiction of themes related to World War II. Das Erfrischt is born from Kippenberger’s critique of such art, which he believed failed to challenge stereotypical notions of German culture as sober, wary of impolitic discussion, and fixated on past traumas. Far from wishing to ignore the topic of discussion, Kippenberger aimed to free it. Of the demolished Berlin Wall, he said: “the wall ought to have been preserved. We don’t need excavations, like in Greece - in this country history happens at your front door. Beuys thought the wall should have been seven centimeters higher - on purely aesthetic grounds” (Ibid., p.46). Das Erfrischt is, in this sense, an important precursor to the iconic painting Ich Kann beim besten Willen kein Hakenkreuz entdecken (With the best will in the world, I can’t see a swastika) of 1984, a deliberate jumble of quasi-deconstructed swastikas, which protested the ban on their depiction and thus the hypocritical smothering of history. Deliberately avoiding the staid and serious, Das Erfrischt still proposes a profoundly insightful corrective to contemporary narratives of German history, refreshing the common repository of historical references by calling attention to a marginalised chapter. Cannily synthesising his distinctive painting style with conventions and imagery of the burlesque era, and fulfilling his compulsive proclivity to self-depiction, Das Erfrischt is among Kippenberger’s most incisive statements on the culture of his time.