Label Text
The highly influential artist Martin Kippenberger was known for his extremely prolific output in a variety of styles and media, reflecting at once the kitsch and commercial crassness of post-war Germany in the 1970s and his own ambivalence toward the art world. In 1989 the itinerant Kippenberger moved to Los Angeles for a brief period in an eccentric and failed attempt to open an Italian restaurant in Venice, California. It was during this time that he created Untitled (The Sovereign) (1989), drawn on stationery from a 1928 Spanish colonial revival hotal and an apartment building located in Santa Monica, California. This drawing features a cartoonish rendering of one of his most iconic pieces, a woozy sculpture entitled Street Lamp for Drunks (1988), along with a pair of juicy, disembodied lips with a text bubble saying "Hi Bruce" and the word karate directly above that. It is believed that this series originally related to an important body of three-dimensional wotk known as the Peter sculptures (1987), but has subsequently come to define the artist's profuse movement throughout the world.
Source: News, January February March, 2010.
DimensionsFrame: 16 1/8 × 13 1/2 × 1 in. (41 × 34.3 × 2.5 cm)
Sheet: 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm)
Sheet: 11 × 8 1/2 in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm)
Accession Number 2009.69
Classificationswork on paper
CopyrightEstate of Martin Kippenberger
SignedM.K (l,l)
Inscriptions"M.K. 89" (l,l pencil)
