Martin Kippenberger, The Problem Perspective
Museum of Modern Art
February 24 - May 11, 2009

In the MoMA lobby during the reception for the Martin Kippenberger show, there was a moment of unplanned performance art, bad behavior that some found a testimony to his enduring legacy.

People fed up at the long coat-check line began piling their coats on the floor, and, two hours into an open bar, a few began diving under, creating a writhing lobby octopus. Security guards broke it up, one noting to the applauding crowd, "This is not part of the Kippenberger exhibition. This is about people drinking too much."

But if I might say, the entire Kippenberger oeuvre is fundamentally about one person drinking too much, and everything that follows from that. As Holland Cotter noted in his review of the show:

As an artist he was a performer, an entertainer, a provoker, as he was in life. At punk bars and biennials he was the juiced-up guy who made scintillating speeches, picked stupid fights and periodically dropped his pants. He was the same person in his art.