Martin Kippenberger

Roberto Ohrt

Thomas Groetz

Palacio de Velázquez (Madrid, Spain)

The first individual exhibition of the German artist Martin Kippenberger (Dortmund 1953 ? Vienna 1997) at a Spanish museum displays a total of one hundred paintings, sculptures and drawings. The works are selected from two of the finest collections of the artist's work in the world: those of publisher Benedikt Taschen and fellow-artist Albert Oehlen. Kippenberger's art has been posthumously exhibited at several of the most important artistic events of the last few decades, including the Documenta X in Kassel, Germany; the Skulptur in M'nster, Germany; the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland; and, most recently, museum shows in Karlsruhe, Germany, Vienna, Austria and Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Kippenberger : pinturas ; paintings ; Gemälde ; [en colaboración con la exposición Martin Kippenberger ; Palacio de Velázquez, Parque del Retiro, Madrid / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía ; del 20 de octubre de 2004 al 10 de enero de 2005]

Axel Heil

A comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorn’s Modifications Paintings on view at Petzel Gallery in New York from March 5th to April 13th, 2019. With texts written and edited by the curators as well as reprinted articles on the subjects of détournement, vandalism, and the relationship between modifications and appropriation art in the late 1970s. If you have old paintings, do not despair. Retain your memories but detourn them so that they correspond with your era. Why reject the old, if one can modernize it? —Asger Jorn Published on the occasion of the exhibition Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorn’s Modifications Paintings at Petzel Gallery in New York (March 5 – April 13, 2019) – this historical group show of over 30 prominent international artists investigates multifarious appropriation methods situated in the context of the first thrift store paintings altered by Danish artist Asger Jorn. Spanning from the mid-1960s to the flourishing techniques of the 1980s, up to the present day. In Paris, 1959, Asger Jorn exhibits a group of paintings at the prominent Galerie Rive Gauche. Not only has he re-worked these found paintings with his own brush, modifying their respective surfaces, but he also writes a text describing his technique as a recovery of certain iconographic archetypes. Instead of making a mockery of these kitsch paintings, he articulates some of their inherent folk-art values. The exhibition is not well received. However, it has since become legendary. Jorn’s modifications have long been a neglected chapter in the Danish artist’s biography. Yet from today’s perspective these high/low hermaphrodites are recognized by keen-eyed viewers as mirrors reflecting the historicity of modern painting. Such “Modifications” are a painterly version of “détournement,” a Situationist technique, described in 1956 by Guy Debord and Gil Wolman as the systematic revaluation of “prefabricated aesthetic products.” For Jorn, who co-founded and financially supported the Situationist International, the 1959 Galerie Rive Gauche exhibition, showcased his implementation of a fundamental aesthetic critique in which he appropriates a relatively discredited artistic source as “his” own material, then applies his iconography, and his language to that particular prefabricated model. Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorn’s Modification Paintings features works by Enrico Baj, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Vidya Gastaldon, Wade Guyton/Stephen Prina, Rachel Harrison, Ray Johnson, Jacqueline de Jong, Asger Jorn, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Lee Krasner, Albert Oehlen, Francis Picabia, Stephen Prina, R.H. Quaytman, Arnulf Rainer, Julian Schnabel, Jim Shaw, Gedi Sibony, Alexis Smith, Daniel Spoerri, John Stezaker, Betty Tompkins, and David Wojnarowicz.

Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorn's Modification Paintings

This book offers a concise overview of the diverse accomplishments of Danish artist Asger Jorn. The book comprises over 75 images of Jorn’s work, each with complete provenance, exhibition and literature history. A comprehensive biography of the artist is also included, along with photographs and other archival material.

The Open Hide

Asger Jorn

Aby Warburg

Claudia Wedepohl

From 1925 until his death in 1929 the Hamburg-based art and cultural scholar Aby Warburg worked on his Mnemosyne Atlas, a volume of plates that has, in the meanwhile, taken on mythical status in the study of modern art and visual studies. With this project, Warburg created a visual reference system that was far ahead of its time. Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil have now undertaken the task of finding all of the individual pictures from the atlas and displaying these reproductions of artworks from the Middle East, European antiquity, and the Renaissance in the same way that Warburg himself showed them, on panels hung with black fabric. This folio volume and the exhibition in Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin succeed in restoring Warburg's vanished legacy-something that researchers have long considered impossible.

The Original

Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

Thomas McEvilley

Edward Kienholz's life-size tableau "Five Car Stud" (1969-72) depicts four automobiles and a pickup truck, arranged on a dirt floor in a dark room with their headlights illuminating a shocking scene: a group of white men exacting their gruesome "punishment" on an African American man. "Five Car Stud" is a harsh reminder of a shameful part of our history whose traces still linger. It was seen only in Germany in 1972 and has since remained in storage in Japan for almost 40 years. On the occasion of its first public showing in the United States, this volume examines an extraordinarily powerful artistic statement that has lost none of its potency. The catalogue presents essays by Roberto Ohrt and Thomas McEvilley, as well as an interview with American artist Paul McCarthy.

Roberto Ohrt

About

Books

Join the club