Martin Kippenberger - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 16, 2006 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin; Galerie Wewerka, Berlin

  • Catalogue Essay

    Throughout the 1980s, Martin Kippenberger’s artwork undergoes periods of strong political reflection. Using stark imagery and appropriating symbols, Kippenberger develops his canvases in expressive fashion, charging them with tools of the eye and of suggestion. In the present lot, painted in 1984, the artist squares into prospective a solitary table, adorned simply with a binder of papers and a red book, an object which evokes a strong Communist presence thru color alone. But there are more political expressions in the work than immediately laid bare: the sparse accommodations we witness in the painting, combined with the muted colors and pseudo-futuristic architecture of the interior scene, all suggest the way of life in Communist-occupied East Germany. As a West German artist, the perspective Kippenberger takes is one that enunciates the frugal truth behind this period of history. Lying behind the imagery is the banal life harking to lost Constructivist ideals.

28

Antikriegsmuseum- Befehl im Museum für unnötige Kriegsforchung

1984
Oil on canvas.
62 7/8 x 52 5/8 in. (159.7 x 133.7 cm).

Estimate
$350,000 - 450,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

16 Nov 2006, 7pm
New York