Hotel Drawings
MARTIN KIPPENBERGER
MARTIN KIPPENBERGER, 1995
Kippenberger let the stationary guide him. Over the course of his short life, he drew hundreds of works on Hotel Notecards he collected on his travels, often from hotels he never stayed in. Exceeding their origin as preparatory sketches for wider works, the hotel drawings became a constant source of reflection, almost diaristic in nature. Kippenberger drew self portraits from that day, surrealist renderings of his emotional state. He drew Frank Sinatra, scientists, graphic posters, cartoons, the hotels themselves, but while they are frenetic in their multitude, each taken alone offers a surprising calm. A staggering technical ability is evident, and a breadth of style remarkable, the story of the letterheads, and of a rambunctious, nomadic life that it tells, is offset but a profound sense of self, and of calmness within that self.