Since I first saw his work back in my student days, the German artist Martin Kippenberger has been a big influence on me. I was always sympathetic enough to his fabled ‘bad boy’ persona but the art itself has a specific tone, a brand of humour that I find key, and as a student poring over his oeuvre in the art school library I felt I’d found a kindred spirit. In 2006, a couple of years after graduating, I took the train down to London with my Mum to see the Kippenberger retrospective at Tate Modern. That show included his magnum opus, the 1994 installation The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’, which is an overwhelming, dizzying experience. I hope this Day can manage to give a sense of it.
Martin Kippenberger (25 February 1953 – 7 March 1997) was a German artist known for his extremely prolific output in a wide range of styles and media, superfiction as well as his provocative, jocular and hard-drinking public persona.
The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ (1994) explores the fictional utopia of universal employment, adapting Kafka’s idea of communal job interviews into an artwork. The installation consists of a diverse assortment of objects and furniture, assembled to suggest a playing field for conducting mass interviews. There are over 40 tables and twice as many chairs, from classics of twentieth-century design, such as chairs by Arne Jacobsen and Charles Eames, to worn-out tables bought in flea markets, remnants of previous Kippenberger exhibitions, and even work by other artists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kippenberger
Based on Kafka's novel 'Amerika', Kippenberger re-imagines the final scene of the unfinished book and suggests an alternative ending. At this point in the story the lead protagonist Karl Rossmann (after traveling across America) applies for a job at 'the biggest theater in the world' where 'every one is welcome' and 'whoever wants to become an artist should sign up!' Claiming that he also never finished reading the book, Kippenberger approaches the unfinished condition of the novel as an open possibility for an uncharacteristically 'happy ending’.
The wide variety of tables and chairs present an abundance of possible meanings and outcomes for Karl Rossmanns interview at the theater, whilst suggesting a range of personalities and psychological types. Although an installation, the work becomes a comment on the importance of communication, relationships and dialogues. Fundamentally the social processes involved in an artistic practice.
Jack Brindley
http://openfileblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/martin-kippenberger-happy-end-of-franz.html
Kippenberger wanted to supply a happy ending to Franz Kafka's unfinished novel, Amerika. The Kippenberger solution took the form of a sprawling installation, which provides the high point of the Tate Modern retrospective. An arrangement of about 50 chairs and tables stands on a green mat imprinted with the lines of a football pitch. The assorted furniture - including 20th-century design classics, chairs and tables "adapted" by other artists as well as refashioned by Kippenberger himself - is arranged as though for interviews. In Kafka's novel, the protagonist applies for a job advertised at "the biggest theatre in the world". "Whoever wants to become an artist should sign up," the advert invites.
Kippenberger's desks and chairs are implausible, uncomfortable settings, each a sculptural tableau in its own right. There are Eames chairs and Jacobsens, a table set with jars of body parts (on which filmed talking heads by artist Tony Ousler are projected), chairs set with African carvings, desks with Kippenberger's own paintings stashed underneath, a metal table rimed in thick paint and gloopy silicon. Standing amid it all are rickety, concentration-camp-style watchtowers and a lifeguard's tower. Unfortunately, viewers won't be able to wander within the installation, but will have to be content to observe from the stadium bleachers at either side, like spectators at the big game.
Most alarming of all are the motorised ejector seats that whir perilously around a circular track, in orbit of a gigantic model of a fried egg. It is all, of course, a model of the art world, but it looks like a torture garden. I imagine Nicholas Serota and Tate Modern director Vicente Todoli strapped in, being whirled around at unimaginable G-forces. I think Kippi would have liked that. It would have made a Happy End.
Adrian Searle
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2006/feb/07/2
Kippenberger and the MOMA show make the best cases for themselves with “The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ ” (1994), a vast installation in the museum’s atrium. The work represents the recruitment center for the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, where Kafka’s immigrant hero applies for work, as a warren of office furniture and bizarre objects on an abbreviated soccer field. There are thrift-store and classic modern chairs (an Eames, a Gehry), similarly miscellaneous lamps, concentration-camp and lifeguard watchtowers, and a carrousel of two cockpit ejector seats around a sculpture of a fried egg. Bleachers are provided from which we may gaze our fill at nothing happening. It makes stirring sense for Kippenberger, a paladin of uncalled-for gestures, to identify with the disconcertingly upbeat “Amerika,” so at odds with Kafka’s signature tales of dread. I can think of few other artists so richly deserved by their times. For that very reason, whenever I go to contemplate a contemporary art work for pleasure, it will not be a Kippenberger.
Peter Schjeldahl
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/09/taking-a-toll
At the centre of gravity of Kippenberger’s oeuvre is the installation organized around a closed book, ‘The Happy Ending of Franz Kafka’s Amerika’ (1994). Notoriously, Kippenberger never finished his reading of Kafka’s novel, but relied on a colleague’s account of the closing chapter. In some ways, this is entirely appropriate, since Kafka did not finish his work on the text, and in any case, he had not visited the settings he described, fabricating an America of the imagination based on received ideas of the United States. The vast array of chairs and tables that predominate in the installation recalls the scenario in Kafka’s immense ‘Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’, where the offer of total employment involves a series of humiliating job interviews. Kippenberger’s simulation of a received version of Kafka is inflected by the recent history of the movement of labour and the ubiquity of immigration centres, all organized ultimately around the interview situation. If the twentieth century starts with Manhattan as the location for the imagined opportunities of economic migration, it ends with the cross-border traffic of Kippenberger’s Europe, in which one interview leads to another in a process that involves the re-making of the self as a permanent condition. Whether this condition has the potential for reanimation or diminution is clearly an open question: the ‘happy ending’ has not yet been written.
Postmodern desire is for received ideas of the desirable, relayed mechanically by a culture industry whose keenest observer and most tenacious parasite was the incorrigible Martin Kippenberger.
Rod Mengham
http://magazine.saatchiart.com/articles/the_incorrectness_of_martin_ki
Although most of Kippenberger’s oeuvre tends toward the creation of a vast, interconnected artwork, The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’, 1994 is unique in that it might be considered his masterwork and the culmination of his achievement. Based on Kafka’s novel Amerika, the installation re-imagines a section of the book when the protagonist Karl Rossmann, having travelled across America, applies for a job at the ‘biggest theatre in the world’. ‘Everybody is welcome!’ proclaims the call for employment, ‘Whoever wants to become an artist should sign up!’. Kafka never completed the novel, which he abandoned writing over ten years before it was posthumously published in 1927, and Kippenberger claimed that he never finished reading it, hearing the story second-hand from a friend. The unfinished condition of the book leaves open the possibility, unusual in Kafka’s fiction, for a ‘happy ending’.
The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ explores the fictional utopia of universal employment, adapting Kafka’s idea of communal job interviews into an artwork. Kippenberger described the situation depicted in his installation as ‘a circus in town, looking to employ reliable hands, helpers, doers, self-confident handlers and the like. Outside the circus tent, in my imagination, there would be tables and chairs set up for job interviews’. The installation consists of a diverse assortment of objects and furniture, assembled to suggest a playing field for conducting mass interviews. There are over 40 tables and twice as many chairs, from classics of twentieth-century design, such as chairs by Arne Jacobsen and Charles Eames, to worn-out tables bought in flea markets, remnants of previous Kippenberger exhibitions, and even work by other artists.
The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ is Kippenberger’s most complex work, presenting the viewer with an overabundance of possible meanings. At one level, the installation refers to the competition between artists and constant judgements within the art community. Yet the variety of furniture also suggests a range of personalities and psychological types, and the interview format reflects the artist’s belief in the fundamental importance of relationships and dialogues.
Jessica Morgan
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/martin-kippenberger/martin-kippenberger-room-guide-introduction-6
In Martin Kippenberger’s epic installation The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ (1994) a roomful of unmatched desks and chairs are arranged on a green sports ground, with bleachers on each end. The piece takes its title from Kafka’s unfinished last novel from 1927, which ends with its protagonist applying for work at the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma after reading an advertisement stating: ‘Whoever wants to be an artist should sign up’. Kippenberger’s installation was an effort to complete Kafka’s work without fixing it to a single narrative; each desk represents a job interview, to be carried out by Kippenberger and his colleagues, collected and published. The Happy End… is a concept, but it also signifies a performance, of every job applicant and every artist, and the capacity to reinvent the same subject with each performance.
Although viewers were kept off the actual ‘Amerika’ installation, the bleachers allowed access to the imaginary interviews. From a distance the absurdity of the process, and of those repressive cultural conventions that engender it, begins to focus. From the laughter of the condemned comes, always, the funniest joke.
Natalie Hatted
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/martin_kippenberger3/
Kippenberger's late masterpiece The Happy End of Kafka's Amerika takes the modern working world as its subject. In the unfinished Franz Kafka novel Amerika (or The Man Who Disappeared) the protagonist is looking for work. The poster that leads him to an absurdist interview taking place on a grand scale reads, "At the racecourse in Clayton, today from 6 a.m. till midnight, personnel is being hired for the Theatre in Oklahoma! The great Theatre of Oklahoma is calling you! It's calling you today only! If you miss this opportunity, there will never be another! Anyone thinking of his future, your place is with us! All welcome! Anyone who wants to be an artist, step forward! We are the theatre that has a place for everyone, everyone in his place! If you decide to join us, we congratulate you here and now! But hurry, be sure not to miss the midnight deadline! We shut down at midnight, never to reopen! Accursed be anyone who doesn't believe us! Clayton here we come!"
In Kafka's work interviewers evaluate interviewees in an expansive environment. We know that the questions do not regard whether the potential worker has pursued a work which will clear a space for play which will lead to freedom. We know the questions are of the kind determining whether the potential worker will be of the sort that will suit the needs of the interviewer. Kafka's protagonist makes the claim of being an engineer just to get the process over with. So here Kippenberger creates a sculpture that presents a seemingly endless array of interview tables and chairs--not at a racecourse but on a soccer pitch--and this diversity, a wild diversity shared by all the work's constituting elements, is itself a demonstration of play, a demonstration of freedom, which takes as its subject not enforced servitude but voluntary servitude. Some freedom is not only work but revolt.
To make the association of work with servitude or bondage clear, Kippenberger has placed on the edge of the sports field observation towers of the kind one would find in a prison or concentration camp. The towers emphasize that there is a direct relationship between the enforced servitude of the concentration camp and the voluntary servitude of the workplace. Work will not set you free if it is not your work.
Not only do the disparate designs for the chairs and tables (some found junk, some design classics, some hand made, some made by other artists--Tony Oursler and Jason Rhoades included) suggest a subversion of the standardized interview process so does the very design of the field. The use of the sports field as the ground for the sculpture emphasizes that there are rules to the game of servitude and Kippenberger's work insists on directing our attention to the absurd rules of the interview process in Kafka's Amerika. The goal areas are not laid out in the proper places for a standard soccer field. The should be across from one another at each end of the longest part of the field. Instead they are across from one another at what would be the midpoint of the field so that they are as close together as they could be. This negation of the design becomes revolt. The revolt itself, as discussed, is the result of play.
Goldstein says, "Kippenberger embraced failure as a generative strategy." Looking at The Happy End of Kafka's Amerika this failure can be reevaluated.
Erik Bakke
http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/003/002/articles/ebakke/index.php
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p.s. Hey. Today the honorable artist of view and sound Ben Robinson who also just happens to be the no less honorable d.l. _Black_Acrylic would like to fasten your interest and attention span to this major work by the always fascinating, late and much missed visual artist Martin Kippenberger, and it seems to me that he has done a stellar job with no small amount of help from Kippenberger's talent, naturally. Why don't you get to know what's up there through _B_A's finessing lens and then tell _B_A what happened to the inside of your head when you did that? Thank you. Thank you ever so much, Ben! ** David Ehrenstein, That is indeed a fine film. As you can imagine, I went out of my way to keep JT Leroy out of that hoaxes post for the obvious reasons, but yes, indeed. ** Bacteriaburger, Wow, hey there Natty! Really great to see you, man! How are you? ** Douglas Payne, Hi. The Sandy Hook truthers are definitely among the weirdest of the weirdly believing folks out there. I imagine the psychology-inclined would have quite the field day with their internal lives. I wrote you this morning. We seem to be in the final stages of nailing it down. Yes! Hm, if I were to pick a favorite Almodovar film off the top of my head, it seems that, having now briefly scoured my memory, I would end up making the kind of non-idiosyncratic choice of 'All About My Mother'. That's interesting -- a friend in Paris just urged me to watch Polanski's 'Venus in Furs' not two days ago. Will do asap. Thanks! No, I'm behind on current movies right now other than things I've watched online in relation to making posts about filmmakers here. Like I said, 'Jurassic World' was garbage. I want to see the new Noe, 'Love', but everyone I know says it's not good. You? ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Great thoughts on hoaxes. Yeah, a great hoax creates a really exciting and kind of ideal collaborative relationship with the susceptible. You know how interesting that is for me. Thinking of my novel as immaterial triggers in the form of a material objects is really big in my stuff. I think a really good hoax is like a cross between an art form and dissertation maybe. I like when they use 'the facts' to create their whirlpool. The obvious and classic example of a great hoax for me was the 'Paul is dead' hoax, so intricate and persuasively using the same real material used to create the 'Paul is alive''truth'. The David Icke-style ones don't interest me much -- the ones that rely on the Illuminati and the paranormal and shape-shifting and stuff, but I've never been a huge fan of science fiction. I like the ones that persuasively make you go, like, 'Oh, shit, I think that ashtray is actually a diamond mine!' Awesome about the great reaction to your novel! Sweet! Dude, if RS doesn't want it, or even if they do, there are plenty of other options out there. ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal. I'm good, thank you very much. Funny you ask about the film because just last night we received confirmation that our film will have its world premiere at a really good festival here in Paris in early September. As soon as the details are worked out, we'll make a formal announcement and release the teaser trailer and stuff. So, yeah, we're happy. If memory serves, the Kosinski novel I liked the best is one that doesn't get mentioned that much: 'Cockpit'. I think I'll have that zoo under my belt by, at the very latest, a week from now. Indian food, yum. My fave is Matar Paneer? Oh, with Cheese Naan on the side. What's yours? I-guess-a-failed-experiment-is-better-than-resting-on-one's-laurels-ly, Dennis. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ha ha. Thank you again and again for the great post today. I am bowing to you and high-fiving you and shaking your hand and giving you the Turner Prize all at the same time. I'll go read that story you linked to. Thanks. Thank you, thank you about the impending Belgian New Beat Day! In addition to all of the above, I'm also drooling. Sorry about the drool part, ha ha. ** Steevee, Hi. Oh, wow, that Leary/CIA thing really doesn't seem plausible at all. As far as I know, it's the 'lesbian' thing that was the hoax part. Good morning to you, sir. ** Michael_karo, Thanks, pal! That's completely out to lunch about the current day flat earth believers, and it's really beautiful too. What a curious head space to use as an escape from the mindfuck of post-tech reality. Government conspiracy believers are so boring. Those theories are like the hoax equivalent of plagiarism or something. ** Bill, Hi. Thanks, man. Yeah, the East German krautrock tapes and the fake electronic music composer thing were my favorites, push comes to shove. Music seems like a really good place in which to base a hoax. Music just inherently creates a smokescreen element or something. I remember 'Fake'. I think I might even have gone to it once, or I might be thinking of one of Steve's other ventures. That guy was/is amazing. Oh, that's interesting about the 'rigid,' explicit' structure. Huh. I'm not sure I understand how that problem raised its head in the piece, but, if you redo it and end up uploading it, maybe that'll solve the mystery. Good luck getting it as perfect as you want by Saturday. ** Misanthrope, If only, right? Yeah, I've read a little about the Hulk controversy thing. I don't know. I'm waiting to see how it coagulates. ** James, Hi. I am familiar with the Hughes bio hoax. I almost included it. It's funny or something because I thought, that one's too obvious, but now that you bring it up, I realize that no one under the age of whatever has any idea about it. Oops! Thank you! ** Okay. Be with Ben and Martin until further notice, thank you. See you tomorrow.