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Descriptif du lot
Painted in 1984, Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf (Self-Portrait with One-Hole Vase) is a masterpiece of Albert Oehlen’s early self-portraiture. Spanning more than two-and-a-half metres in width, the painting is one of only three self-portraits from the 1980s at this monumental scale. Oehlen’s bold application of various painterly techniques is on full display. Thickly layered sections of white and black impasto mould the artist’s profile and his iconic right-side swoop of gelled hair. Sharp strokes of paint, gouged wet-on-wet, mark the vase’s spherical volume and spinning motion, turning and taking shape on the artist’s wheel. The background balances two stark extremes: a midnight black sparkling with glitter, mixed with layers of purple, orange and white paint sanded down or left to drip; and the incandescent curtain of rusty orange, shuttered with black and white stripes. All this painterly agitation revolves around the artist’s magnetic eye: a bright daub of electric blue. Formerly held for over twenty years in the Alessandro Grassi Collection, the work was included in Oehlen’s major institutional exhibition at the New Museum, New York, in 2015. It bears witness to the creative energy that animated the young artist in the early 1980s: full of bravura and bold irreverence toward the traditional aesthetics of painting, and immersed in the dynamic zeitgeist and cross-genre pollinations of the Cologne art scene.
Oehlen’s self-portraits from the 1980s—in his various guises as potter, ethnographer, stable-boy, painter and cyclops—have come to redefine the genre. Alongside his comrade Martin Kippenberger’s famous series depicting himself as Picasso, they are unique and iconic works, capturing the heretical attitudes and brash breakthroughs of these artists during this period. Taught by Sigmar Polke at the Hochschüle für Bildende Künste between 1978 and 1981, Oehlen devoted his early career to radically challenging the boundaries of what painting could be. Yet tackling the art-historically loaded genre of self-portraiture was, even for him, a daunting charge. ‘At the time I posed the self-portrait as a problem for myself in my search for new levels of difficulty,’ he explained, ‘precisely because there’s a huge historical apparatus attached to it, and because it makes you think of art, of seriousness and meaning. Putting myself next to the masters’ (quoted in R. Goetz, ‘Self-Portrait with Open Mouth: New Conversations about Painting’, in Albert Oehlen: Self-Portraits, exh. cat., Skarstedt Gallery, New York, 2002, p. 48).
Oehlen answered the ‘masters’—from Albrecht Dürer to Max Beckmann—with a pointed irreverence. His enlarged fingers in Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf riff upon the traditional primacy of the artist’s hand within self-portraiture. Oehlen upturned such conventions with impudent glee. Standing in front of Selbstporträt mit Pferd (Self-Portrait with Horse) (1985), now at the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, he proudly ‘remembered how it felt at the time, and the punk attitude when I painted my hands so badly’ (ibid.). Alongside Kippenberger, Oehlen was committed to creating a form of ‘bad painting’ which dismantled the mythic status of the artist precisely through a medium that privileged its own riotous, bold and messy textures. Forged in a landscape still dominated by Joseph Beuys’ conceptual installations and other actions, his painterly practice was itself a rebellious commitment. ‘The artist’s “freedom” is the duty not to be boring,’ he explained. ‘You have to put painting under stress, that’s what matters’ (quoted in D. Diederichsen, ‘The Rules of the Game’, Artforum, November 1994, p. 71).
Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf, for all its indulgent subversiveness, is a celebration of Oehlen’s creative powers. Blurred strokes of white paint surround the artist’s head and hands with a ghostly halo, highlighting the source and agents of his artistic imagination; the sapphire-blue eye at the centre of the painting sparkles with a magical wink. Painted when Oehlen’s practice involved many other forms of artistic expression, from performance and text art to collaborative painting, music and sculpture, Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf depicts Oehlen making a simple vase. By centring this age-old, ur-artform of pottery, the artist casts himself as a master craftsman, accomplished and dexterous, but endlessly adaptable. This commitment to tactility and experimentation would stay with Oehlen throughout his career. He would become one of the first adopters of computer art, digital printing, mixed media collage and other forms of abstract painting in the following decades. His radical commitment to redefining the boundaries of his medium has inspired generations of contemporary artists since, including Christopher Wool, Laura Owens and Charline von Heyl.
Oehlen affectionately reused the vase motif in 1986 for Selbstporträt beim Töpfern (Self-Portrait While Making Pottery). He recalled painting this picture whilst living in Vienna and sharing a studio with Kippenberger: ‘the picture somehow restored my spirits … a vase like the one I painted there has something about it that is very easy to interpret. The pot also occurred in the Wahrheit ist Arbeit (Truth is Work) texts by Werner [Büttner] and me. We made the one-hole pot into a highly meaningful symbol’ (quoted in R. Goetz, op. cit., p. 58). Predictably, however, the Wahrheit ist Arbeit texts, published alongside the infamous 1984 Museum Folkwang exhibition in Essen, are far from symbolically clear. Oehlen’s writings, rather, encourage artistic influx and overstimulation: ‘Apply the test, recognise truth by its style … find out how it feels from the inside’ (quoted in R. Ohrt, ‘Untitled (Early Work)’, in H. Holzwarth, ed., Albert Oehlen, Cologne, 2009, p. 10). His return to the vase motif testifies to the importance of Selbstportät mit Einlochtopf in Oehlen’s artistic self-fashioning. There is a wonderful dichotomy between the riotous energy of the punkish German art milieu it exemplifies and the simple but intense concentration of the artist labouring over his pottery or his painting.
Oehlen’s self-portraits from the 1980s—in his various guises as potter, ethnographer, stable-boy, painter and cyclops—have come to redefine the genre. Alongside his comrade Martin Kippenberger’s famous series depicting himself as Picasso, they are unique and iconic works, capturing the heretical attitudes and brash breakthroughs of these artists during this period. Taught by Sigmar Polke at the Hochschüle für Bildende Künste between 1978 and 1981, Oehlen devoted his early career to radically challenging the boundaries of what painting could be. Yet tackling the art-historically loaded genre of self-portraiture was, even for him, a daunting charge. ‘At the time I posed the self-portrait as a problem for myself in my search for new levels of difficulty,’ he explained, ‘precisely because there’s a huge historical apparatus attached to it, and because it makes you think of art, of seriousness and meaning. Putting myself next to the masters’ (quoted in R. Goetz, ‘Self-Portrait with Open Mouth: New Conversations about Painting’, in Albert Oehlen: Self-Portraits, exh. cat., Skarstedt Gallery, New York, 2002, p. 48).
Oehlen answered the ‘masters’—from Albrecht Dürer to Max Beckmann—with a pointed irreverence. His enlarged fingers in Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf riff upon the traditional primacy of the artist’s hand within self-portraiture. Oehlen upturned such conventions with impudent glee. Standing in front of Selbstporträt mit Pferd (Self-Portrait with Horse) (1985), now at the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, he proudly ‘remembered how it felt at the time, and the punk attitude when I painted my hands so badly’ (ibid.). Alongside Kippenberger, Oehlen was committed to creating a form of ‘bad painting’ which dismantled the mythic status of the artist precisely through a medium that privileged its own riotous, bold and messy textures. Forged in a landscape still dominated by Joseph Beuys’ conceptual installations and other actions, his painterly practice was itself a rebellious commitment. ‘The artist’s “freedom” is the duty not to be boring,’ he explained. ‘You have to put painting under stress, that’s what matters’ (quoted in D. Diederichsen, ‘The Rules of the Game’, Artforum, November 1994, p. 71).
Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf, for all its indulgent subversiveness, is a celebration of Oehlen’s creative powers. Blurred strokes of white paint surround the artist’s head and hands with a ghostly halo, highlighting the source and agents of his artistic imagination; the sapphire-blue eye at the centre of the painting sparkles with a magical wink. Painted when Oehlen’s practice involved many other forms of artistic expression, from performance and text art to collaborative painting, music and sculpture, Selbstporträt mit Einlochtopf depicts Oehlen making a simple vase. By centring this age-old, ur-artform of pottery, the artist casts himself as a master craftsman, accomplished and dexterous, but endlessly adaptable. This commitment to tactility and experimentation would stay with Oehlen throughout his career. He would become one of the first adopters of computer art, digital printing, mixed media collage and other forms of abstract painting in the following decades. His radical commitment to redefining the boundaries of his medium has inspired generations of contemporary artists since, including Christopher Wool, Laura Owens and Charline von Heyl.
Oehlen affectionately reused the vase motif in 1986 for Selbstporträt beim Töpfern (Self-Portrait While Making Pottery). He recalled painting this picture whilst living in Vienna and sharing a studio with Kippenberger: ‘the picture somehow restored my spirits … a vase like the one I painted there has something about it that is very easy to interpret. The pot also occurred in the Wahrheit ist Arbeit (Truth is Work) texts by Werner [Büttner] and me. We made the one-hole pot into a highly meaningful symbol’ (quoted in R. Goetz, op. cit., p. 58). Predictably, however, the Wahrheit ist Arbeit texts, published alongside the infamous 1984 Museum Folkwang exhibition in Essen, are far from symbolically clear. Oehlen’s writings, rather, encourage artistic influx and overstimulation: ‘Apply the test, recognise truth by its style … find out how it feels from the inside’ (quoted in R. Ohrt, ‘Untitled (Early Work)’, in H. Holzwarth, ed., Albert Oehlen, Cologne, 2009, p. 10). His return to the vase motif testifies to the importance of Selbstportät mit Einlochtopf in Oehlen’s artistic self-fashioning. There is a wonderful dichotomy between the riotous energy of the punkish German art milieu it exemplifies and the simple but intense concentration of the artist labouring over his pottery or his painting.