Markus lupertz

260 pages 173 illustrations

omslag totaal.indd 1

MARKUS LÜPERTZ

isbn 978–0–943044–42–2

MARKUS LÜPERTZ

What do you want from painting?

Painting is culture, and who says culture says substance of the

world. Painting provides the vocabulary to make the world visible.

M.L.

14.03.17 17:25

plate 17 [hmsg]

Markus LĂźpertz

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Phillips Collection washington, dc 2017 Sieveking Verlag, munich

Markus LĂźpertz painting, photograph by Benjamin Katz, 1992.

contents

6

Q&A markus lüpertz

8

Greeting Ambassador peter wittig

10

Directors’ Foreword melissa chiu and dorothy kosinski

14

Markus Lüpertz dorothy kosinski

30

A Stone Is a Hill, a Hill Is a Stone richard shiff

48

“A Painter without Responsibilities”: Markus Lüpertz, 1962–1975 evelyn c. hankins

64

Painting in the Manner of Markus Lüpertz; or, The Dandyism of Existence peter weibel

82

Plates

188

Plate List

193

Chronology

197

Sources

230

Solo Exhibitions

239

Group Exhibitions

257

Photo Credits

dorothy kosinski

13. 9 Drawings: Ohne Titel (Herkules) (Untitled [Hercules]), 2010, charcoal/crayon, each 9½ x 11½ in.

(42 x 29.5 cm), private collection.

24

markus lüpertz

14. Lüpertz, Standbein — Spielbein (Supporting Leg — Free Leg), 1982, painted bronze, 126 x 39⅜ x 39⅜ in.

(320 x 100 x 100 cm), private collection.

25

richard shiff

Heights]; plates 66, 67) and Iphegenie (Märkisch) consist of nothing if not atmosphere. In a note to himself around 1966–67, Lüpertz had stated a fundamental goal: “To find a representation suited to being painted as an abstraction.”28 The atmosphere we derive from his recent imagery—atmosphere as a representational abstraction—evokes experience that belongs only to painting.

22. Twentieth Century Fox Logo, 1956.

27. Lüpertz, “Markus Lüpertz in conversation with Peter Doig,” 13, 15–16.

28. See the note reproduced in Markus Lüpertz: A Retrospective, 154.

29. Michael Werner verified that the movie logo was the prime source of the configuration that Lüpertz called his “dithyramb”; conversation with the author, Düsseldorf, January 11, 2005.

30. Lüpertz, “Markus Lüpertz in conversation with Peter Doig,” 13.

31. Ibid., 14.

32. Ibid., 6.

Dithyramb Following his Donald Duck series, Lüpertz had turned to a different bit of American pop imagery—the corporate logo for the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio, a dynamic presentation of graphic lettering, projected as if sculpted in three dimensions ( fig. 22).29 The legible inscription becomes a prismatic solid dramatically viewed in angular perspective, made to resemble a classical entablature crowning a grand edifice. Lüpertz encountered this visual conceit repeatedly, having inadvertently become a film buff, a regular at a local theatre: “We had a special cinema in Berlin, near the train station . . . It was warm and the price of entry was [only] two Deutschmarks.”30 At the time, he may or may not have comprehended that the Twentieth Century Fox logo represented the techniques of both painting and sculpture, appropriately set into the context of a moving image. I suspect that this was his intuition, even if it remained unarticulated; and it seems to have been reflected in numerous drawings of schematically configured objects, rendered with indications of projection forward and back, all within an elemental spatial environment ( fig. 23). From the film company logo, seen at the start of each cinematic performance, Lüpertz derived what crystallized for him into a set of basic features of pictorial representation. In turn, these features constituted the form he identified as his “dithyramb,” which he defined with a contradiction that applies to his art in its entirety: “something abstract which is also figurative.”31 A prime example, Dithyramb—schwebend (Dithyramb—Hovering, 1964; fig. 24), closely follows the cinematic source. “I have no interest in the motif as such,” Lüpertz says, referring to the significance for the general culture of his various themes.32 Images derived from graphic representations of common objects, isolated in anonymous pictorial space like Dithyramb—schwebend, became dithyrambic as well—from the modest

42

a stone is a hill

structures of camping tents (Zelt 46 —dithyrambisch [Tent 46—Dithyrambic], plate 12) to the imposing heights of apartment blocks (Babylon — dithyrambisch ii [Babylon — Dithyrambic ii]; plate 35). “During the time I was making [the Tents,] everything I drew, everything I painted was like looking at these things through a ‘tent-perspective.’”33 The various Tent forms resemble the variations on the movie logo, as if each were the other processed through a perspective manipulation.

In Lüpertz’s graphic investigations of the fundamentals of representation, numerous drawings preceded groups of paintings of the simple objects, candidates for dithyrambic status; included were timbers (Baumstamm abwärts — dithyrambisch [Tree Trunk Down—Dithyrambic]; plate 18), roof tiles (Dachpfanne [Roof Tile]; plate 17), steel helmets (Helme sinkend—dithyrambisch [Helmets Sinking—Dithyrambic]; plate 25), and ears of grain (Die Ähre—dithyrambisch [Spike— Dithyrambic]; plate 33). Among other qualities, each image conveys a dramatic sense of volumetric projection, removing it—as abstraction — from its representational banality.

A dithyramb has both straight and curving contours, both planar frontality and diagonal recession, both illuminated highlights and dark voids. In Feigling (Dithyrambisch) (Coward [Dithyrambic]); plate 7), the frontal plane establishes a visage, which is projected into an abstract volume and set into a spatial environment, as if the blue below could represent a ground and the white above were a vault of colorless air. A dithyrambic object activates the space surrounding it. It often involves a line or contour that loops back on itself, like the curves of the 2 and the 0 in the movie logo or the counterbalancing curves that define a face in Feigling (Dithyrambisch). In many later works, Lüpertz used a reversing loop as a fundamental structural element for an entire graphic system (Männer ohne Frauen. Parsifal [Men without Women: Parsifal]; plates 57–60).34 A dithyramb represents the process of representation; its properties are abstract and pictorial, belonging to the nature of graphic images rather than to what a particular image might signify.

Imagine reading a text for the quality of its graphic lettering rather than its message; this would be analogous to Lüpertz’s perception of pictures: “exciting to see, but always because of the technique of painting, not its thematics.”35 Rather than illustrating human figures, domestic

43

23. Ohne Titel (Dithyrambe) (Untitled [Dithyramb]), 1964, pastel and gouache, 18 x 23¼ in.

(45.6 x 59.3 cm).

24. Lüpertz, Dithyrambe — schwebend (Dithyrambic — Hovering), 1964, distemper on canvas, 78¾ x 76¾ in. (200 x 195 cm), private collection.

33. Ibid., 6–7.

34. See Richard Shiff, “Looping,” Markus Lüpertz: Highways and Byways, ed. Susanne Kleine (Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2009), 202–19; Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, “La fracture du péroné,” Markus Lüpertz: Hommes sans femmes— Parsifal (Paris: Editions du Limon, 1995), 2–3.

6 Küchendithyrambe Kitchen Dithyramb 1964 [hmsg]

91

12 Zelt 46 — dithyrambisch Tent 46—Dithyrambic 1965 [hmsg]

98

13 Zelt 50 — dithyrambisch Tent 50—Dithyrambic 1965 [hmsg]

99

25 Helme sinkend — dithyrambisch Helmets Sinking—Dithyrambic 1970

121

[hmsg]

61 Stilleben Still Life 1998 [tpc]

166

62 Landschaft Landscape 1998 [tpc]

167

The following pages show some of Markus Lßpertz’s source material — both used and yet to be used. The artist takes this source material from books, newspapers, and other media or has it photographed.

He has these images on hand during his preparations and during the actual painting process.

196

Sources

197

Markus LĂźpertz

sources