Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997)

‘The awkward painted copies of photographic projections, sculptures that are cobbled together, cheap materials - these
all gradually coalesce into a melancholy language, setting an international trend that will continue for a decade… In Kippenberger, this practice becomes a way of life; or it can certainly no longer be confined to a cycle of works. The recycling of visual motifs Kippenberger organizes in this photographs, books, posters, paintings matches the way culture is produced outside the domain of autonomous art. He thus transgresses a quite essential boundary, that between the making of art and the collective cultural production, which had, in the late capitalist society, assumed the form of consumption. This, I think, is Martin Kippenberger’s true art-historical significance’ (S. Schmidt-Wulffen, quoted in ‘Interview with Josephine von Perfall, 16 October 2012’, in J. von Perfall (ed.), Kippenberger & Friends, Berlin 2013, p. 134).