Towards the end of his short, unruly life, Martin Kippenberger made a print called Matisse’s Studio Sublet to Spider-Man. In it, the great French painter is pointing with a long stick at a detail of one of his big drawings, while the action hero encircles him in a variety of dramatic poses as if fighting the very idea of art itself.
For Spider-Man, read Kippenberger, a kind of self-styled art anti-hero, whose life represented a similar battle of wills with the art establishment, whom he constantly provoked and often offended. With hindsight, though, the Joker might have been a more apt alter ego for a man who attempted to turn his life itself into an ongoing work of art.
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