he took on the leading role in the eight-part family drama for Austrian TV “Altes Geld” (Old Money). This is a grotesque saga centred around a patriarch searching for a liver donor who is surrounded by his quarrelling family motivated by greed and malice. This was followed a few months later by the release of the documentary “Arteholic”, a journey through European museums, that celebrates Udo Kier as an art aficionado and friend of the artists. It seems that there is plenty going on around the man who once said he would like to be reborn as an Arne Jacobsen designer chair as these are always so lovingly oiled. BLOOD FOR DRACULA - USA 1974
4.59pm. Kier arrives. His eyes are a piercing, unworldly, greeny blue, appearing to faze the young woman at the reception desk. Kier exudes discreet eccentric glamour with the air of a cheeky young rascal. Although dressed in sportswear he holds open the door of his jeep for his visitor as if cloaked in a tuxedo. This is it – the combination of nonchalance and sophistication. Dramatic features, as if cast of iron, and within a vibrant and sensitive soul. Kier’s eyes are gentle – although their powerful capacity to penetrate the screen in devilish, piercinga nd brutal manner is all too familiar. Fassbinder was the first to expose this “Kier effect”, the ability to modulate between tender and brutal. In Fassbinder’s 1977 film “The Stationmaster’s Wife”, Kier is a hairdresser who seduces a customer, played by Elisabeth Trissenaar. Whispering in conspiratorial tones and hypnotic voice he counsels the young provincial woman to go for Greta Garbo curls. “As I said, Madam, I do not wish to cajole you.” Prior to this devil-like appearance, Kier had already fought the inquisition in the horror film “Mark of the Devil”, spewed litres of blood in Andy Warhol’s “Dracula” and enslaved naked women in the French erotic shocker “The Story of O.” However, as so often, it was Fassbinder who recognized the actor’s particular talent. Someone who is at ease with himself and yet, irritatingly, stands an inch away from himself. This is the gap in which a deep chasm in his character looms. On screen Kier does not have to attempt to be a different person, as there is place within this chasm for the most eccentric of visual universes and the weirdest of screen fantasies. It is this ability to exist outside of his own skin that makes him such a great trash performer. Take, for example, the devotion with which he plays the baby that enters the world in Lars von Trier’s hospital mini-series “Kingdom”, bearing an adult Udo Kier head, abandoned by his mother. Or his portrayal of the coughing and spluttering leader of a group of Nazis living on the Moon in the science fiction film “Iron Sky”. Exaggeration would destroy such figures. However, Kier’s performance fills them with a strange dignity. In the summer of 2014, following the death of Gert Voss,
I wonder if he owns lots of great furniture. The route to his place in Palm Springs takes us down the broad highway of Palm Canyon Drive. We go past holiday apartments, boutiques, restaurants, palm-lined boulevards. Suddenly Kier pulls off the road. “I just want to have a look”, he says, as he jumps from the vehicle. Standing on the parking lot of a car dealer is a collection of old Bentleys, Buicks and Chevrolets waiting to be admired. Tenderly Kier strokes his hand across the bodywork of a Ford Mustang. Is it his energizing presence or the desert sun burning away my tiresome European rationality that leads me to imagine spending 6,500 dollars on this yellow 1979 Cadillac Eldorado? Back in the car, Kier says, “It’s nice to look at pretty things.” As we enter his home, a light brick-built construction from the sixties, this sentence takes on a meaning of its own. The building, a former library, is essentially one large room featuring glass doors and broad windows. The walls are hung with artwork by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Sigmar Polke, David Hockney, Rosemarie Trockel and Robert Longo. The floor area is filled with classic designer items by Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen and, of course, Arne Jacobsen. But the room has nothing of a museum about it, something that is helped by the casual disarray visible in one or more corners. Udo Kier gives his visitor a treat to feed to Blue, his old crossbreed dog, which comes ambling into the room from its sleeping quarters. Kier wants to go and shower but holds back, too busy enjoying the outsider’s gaze, “Look at this”, he says, “there’s a shopping bag hanging here that was signed in 1964 by Andy Warhol and by Lichtenstein too.” Kier doesn’t try to hide his enthusiasm at being back at home with his pictures after two months of filming in Vienna. Everything is hung closely together. Many works are dedicated: To Udo with love. “They’re nearly all gifts”, he says. “And reminders. Robert Longo – that was someone I made a film with. Hockney is a friend of mine. Mapplethorpe took pictures of me. Warhol is someone I worked with.” It’s easy to imagine how Warhol took a shine to the almost unnatural sexiness of the 19-year old whom he quickly included in his circle of friends. It was the New York of parties, of Studio 54, of ateliers, of the Factory. Kier takes a pragmatic view of this period in the