Design Issues
OK so I’m responding to some negative responses to the image that was situated on the banner. The black and white photograph on the edge of the banner was deemed in some quarters cheesey and cliched. A fair point though it was never meant to be read as emblematic of the site itself. Nor was it meant to be some sort of indication of my psychological well-being. It was a just a fairly quiet image to sit in the corner and not detract from the text. Anyways I’ve replaced it with a detail of a painting by Martin Kippenberger called ‘Paris Bar Berlin’. I’m sure I’ll change it again soon.
This was a painting I saw at the first of the weirdly titled ‘Triumph of Painting’ exhibitions at the Saatchi gallery a couple of years back. It’s basically a painting of a wall of paintings in a cafe. Perhaps Kippenberger is referencing the tradition within modernism of paintings within paintings - I’m thinking here of Manet, Van Gogh and Matisse who all at some point painted works from their collections as part of interior scenes. One neat little idea of modernism is that it is to some extent the representation of representation. So works such as these are a kind of literal simulation of that process. But I like the sort of work that conveys a sense of affection for a place and I’m sure this must be a basic driving force for many artists. Maybe it was just a place in Berlin Kippenberger liked to hang out in. I’d like to find out more about it.
Kippenberger is a really interesting artist. Though an excellent painter himself his practice spread across a variety of media. Sometimes an assistant would paint something for him, or he’d employ a sign painter to copy an image he’d selected. He also made extraordinary three dimensional creations. All these tropes are gold dust for critics and theorists. I wish I’d been aware of his work when I was at art college as some of his work seems to encapsulated the notion of ‘good bad painting’ that I was searching for at the time (if that makes any sense). Prior to the Young British artists of the 90s Kippenberger was a master of self promotion and the propagation of his own myth, which maybe explains why the British art establishment never really embraced him up until now. I really enjoyed his long overdue retrospective at the Tate. It runs until the 14th of May.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kippenberger/