Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families - Hardcover

Kippenberger, Susanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0982964218 ISBN 13: 9780982964217

Publisher: J&L Books, 2012

Synopsis

Over the course of his 20-year career, Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) cast himself alternately as hard-drinking carouser and confrontational art-world jester, thrusting these personae to the forefront of his prodigious creativity. He was also very much a player in the international art world of the 1970s right up until his death in 1997, commissioning work from artists such as Jeff Koons and Mike Kelley, and acting as unofficial ringleader to a generation of German artists. Written by the artist's sister, Susanne Kippenberger, this first English-language biography draws both from personal memories of their shared childhood and exhaustive interviews with Kippenberger's extended family of friends and colleagues in the art world. Kippenbergergives insight into the psychology and drive behind this playful and provocative artist.

About this title

Review:

In "Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families," Susanne Kippenberger, the youngest of his four sisters, offers a tender, reasonably cleareyed, oddly gripping account of her only brother's headlong plunge through life. A journalist for a Berlin newspaper, she writes in a brisk, personable style that has been sensitively translated by Damion Searls, who has also done justice to Martin Kippenber ger's penchants for non sequiturs, malapropisms and skewed aphorisms ("Never give up before it's too late"). She tries to keep the pros and cons of Kippenberger's outsize personality in view, citing some of the most egregious examples of his art and behavior, but her sympathies are never in doubt. (Roberta Smith New York Times: Book Review 2012-02-17)

About this edition

• Publisher: J&L Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0982964218
• ISBN 13: 9780982964217
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 564