Self Portrait 1988
oil on canvas
78.7 x 94.4 in.
The Saatchi Gallery
MARTIN KIPPENBERGER: THE PROBLEM PERSPECTIVE
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
MARCH 1- MAY 11, 2009
One of the most significant and influential artists of our time, Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997) produced a complex and richly varied body of work from the mid-1970s until his untimely death in 1997 at the age of forty-four. This ambitious, large-scale exhibition includes key selections and bodies of work from his entire career: paintings, sculpture, works on paper, installations, multiples, photographs, posters, announcement cards, books, and music. He turned his work into a late-modernist clearinghouse in which familiar styles, careers and ideas could be re-evaluated, pulled apart, rejected or recombined. Most important, though, is to see how a complex, theatrical, and new-feeling art can be made from ideas and materials already there. The grand demonstration of this phenomenon is the installation called “The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika,’ ” which fills the MoMA atrium.
