Jörg Immendorff
gigatos | June 1, 2022
Summary
Jörg Immendorff († May 28, 2007 in Düsseldorf) was a German artist (painting, sculpture, graphic and action art) and art professor. Immendorff became one of the most famous contemporary German artists since the early 1980s.
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School years and studies
Immendorff was the son of an officer and a secretary. His parents separated when Immendorff was eleven years old; he later described this as the most formative experience of his childhood. As a boarding school student, he attended the Ernst-Kalkuhl-Gymnasium in Bonn-Oberkassel. In the 1960s, he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, first stage design with Teo Otto and then, from 1964, art with Joseph Beuys. Together with Chris Reinecke, whom he met in 1965, he founded the action project “LIDL” in 1968. Immendorff caused a sensation by tying a black-red-gold block to his leg during his first “LIDL” art action and walking up and down with it in front of the Bundestag until the police intervened. His provocative neo-Dadaist actions eventually led to his expulsion from the academy in 1969. During and after his studies, Immendorff became politically involved in the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (the “Tenants” Solidarity” group in Düsseldorf) and became a member of the Maoist KPD.
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Freelance artist
From 1968 to 1981 Immendorff worked as an art teacher (from 1971 to 1981 at the Dumont-Lindemann-Hauptschule in Düsseldorf) before devoting himself entirely to free art. Unlike many other German painters who turned to non-objective art after 1945, he painted representational pictures with political and socially critical content early on. This group of works with striking images from the early 1970s figures under the designation “Agitprop.” In 1972 he participated in documenta 5 in Kassel with a selection of such paintings.
Eventually Immendorff became the representative of a new history painting in Germany. In 1976 he took part in the Venice Biennale, in a group exhibition at the Ex-Cantieri navali. There he distributed a speech text protesting for international exchange of artists and against the anti-democratic system in the GDR. In the same year he began a friendship with the artist A. R. Penck, who was still living in the GDR at the time and was officially frowned upon there. In joint works they addressed the German-German question. Immendorff became known primarily for a series of 16 large-format paintings entitled “Café Deutschland.” The figure-rich scenes take place on a stage-like space and were inspired by Renato Guttuso”s “Caffè greco.” The Düsseldorf discotheque “Revolution”, whose fictional political and cultural guests symbolize the East-West conflict of the time, served as the model for the rooms in the “Café Deutschland” paintings. Immendorff revisited the motif of the animated interior in a similar way between 1987 and 1992 in another series of paintings, this time showing the premises of the Parisian coffee house Café de Flore, also named after it. In these works Immendorff presents himself in different roles, moving in a community of intellectuals and artists. In 1982 Immendorff was represented at Zeitgeist and with the sculpture Brandenburg Gate at documenta 7, and in 1984 at the exhibition Von hier aus – Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst in Düsseldorf. In the same year he opened the “La Paloma” bar in St. Pauli and created a sculpture of Hans Albers. For a time he was close to some painters of the “Junge Wilden”, who saw in him their role model. At the time, he was a guest lecturer at the Cologne Werkschulen. Immendorff was also responsible for several stage designs, for example for the Salzburg Festival. In his stage designs for Stravinsky”s The Rake”s Progress, he drew on motifs by William Hogarth in a self-ironic manner. He was also involved in the artistic design of André Heller”s “Luna Luna” amusement park (1987). In 1988 Immendorff designed the cover and interior of the first issue of the cultural newspaper Lettre International. In 1989 he received a professorship at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and from 1996 he was a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1997 he moved into the top floors of the new Kaistraße Studios building designed by David Chipperfield in Düsseldorf”s Media Harbor as his studio.
In addition to his paintings, Immendorff also created expressive sculptures. Immendorff also portrayed Gerhard Schröder for the Chancellor”s Gallery in the Federal Chancellery and illustrated the BILD Bible, which its editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann presented at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2006. Immendorff”s painting Verwegenheit stiften has hung in Wolfgang Schäuble”s office for many years.
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Sickness and death
On May 28, 2007, Immendorff succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal nerve disease from which he had suffered since 1997. He had already been admitted to the Düsseldorf University Hospital on November 23, 2005, after one hour of emergency medical treatment. Due to a weakening of his respiratory function, a tracheotomy was performed as an access for mechanical ventilation. In the last months before his death, Immendorff was unable to move his arms and legs in the typical course of ALS. His attending physician, the neurologist Thomas Meyer at the Charité hospital in Berlin, stated that the cause of death was assumed to be cardiac arrest caused by the disease; in accordance with Immendorff”s wishes, resuscitation attempts were not attempted.
Immendorff died at the age of 61. In addition to his widow of 27 years, Oda Jaune, he left behind their daughter and his son from an earlier relationship with the Düsseldorf fashion designer Marie-Josephine Lynen.
On June 14, 2007, the day Immendorff would have turned 62, a funeral service for the painter was held at the Alte Nationalgalerie on Museum Island in Berlin. Gerhard Schröder gave a personal speech in which he recalled various trips with him and the last meeting in his Düsseldorf studio in March 2007.
On the first anniversary of his death, the portrait “I, Immendorff,” filmed by Nicola Graef in the last two years of his life, was released in cinemas. A short version of 45 minutes had already been released in 2007, the cinema version comprises 98 minutes. It shows actions from his professional everyday life (painting, teaching, organizing exhibitions) and how he was able to implement them with the help of helpers, because the disease paralyzed him more and more. In addition, there are interviews with his wife, his mother, friends and guests.
At the end of July 2008 it became known that Immendorff may also have “sold copies of his paintings as his own works” (see also self-plagiarism).
Since about 1998 Immendorff changed his style and subject matter. According to his own statement, he now freed his paintings from the narrative tinsel to come to a purer painting. Against monochrome backgrounds, sometimes black but mostly pastel, he set mysterious figures and ciphers that led to Immendorff”s own iconography. In doing so, he clearly borrows from older art. He borrowed one of his new leitmotifs from Hans Baldung Grien. The feet of a naked woman are tied to balls. To keep her balance (or to move around?), she leans on a crutch and a cane. Immendorff has transposed the traditional image of “Fortuna” into a pictorial world of her own. Perhaps this figure with the unstable stand is a sign of uncertainty and change.
In the more recent surreal-looking paintings, other enigmatic motifs known from art history appear, such as the Labyrinth, the Babylonian Tower, and a globe with eight allegorical figures based on an engraving by Jacques de Gheyn made in 1596
As an artist, Immendorff skillfully used the mass media to promote his image. His wedding to his partner, Oda Jaune, a Bulgarian woman over thirty years his junior [a stage name Immendorff gave her: Oda comes from old German and means valuable treasure, and Jaune reflects Immendorff”s favorite color – yellow] was hyped up into a media event in 2000. On August 18, 2003, however, the artist hit the negative headlines because of a drug affair. On August 16, 2003, and on several other dates, he was found to have consumed large quantities of cocaine together with prostitutes in the suite of a posh Düsseldorf hotel. The artist himself admitted to using cocaine since the early 1990s. On August 4, 2004, the Düsseldorf Regional Court sentenced him to eleven months in prison for cocaine possession. The sentence was suspended on condition, among other things, that he pay 150,000 euros to various charitable institutions. Immendorff was thus able to retain his civil servant status and his professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, which he would have lost under civil service law if he had received a prison sentence of one year or more. At the end of October 2003, he had been officially relieved of his duties as a university lecturer at the Düsseldorf Academy. At the beginning of November 2004, however, the suspension as professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy was lifted again. Immendorff was thus allowed to teach again.
Jörg Immendorff founded the ALS Initiative at the Charité Berlin with a “scholarship for research into the cause and therapy of ALS”. He provided his own works of art for charitable institutions on several occasions. In 2000, for example, he dedicated his largest glass painting to the Dresden COSIMA housing project for wheelchair users, where he immortalized his “good spirits” on nine 90 × 144 cm safety glass panels for planking the bridge gallery. In memory of the deceased and in support of the ALS outpatient clinic, the “Immendorff Initiative” exhibited artworks by UDK students Valérie Favre”s specialist class, Jörg Immendorff”s master students, Academy Vienna Daniel Richter”s specialist class and HGB Leipzig Neo Rauch”s specialist class in November 2007 at the “Kunsthof” in Oranienburger Strasse 27 in Berlin and sold them in a “silent auction”.
From September 23, 2005, to January 22, 2006, he was honored with a comprehensive solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which was called Male Lago.Immendorff has also been involved with the non-profit gallery fiftyfifty.
Immendorff was awarded the “Kaiserring” by the city of Goslar for his art on October 7, 2006. According to the jury”s statement, art was “not an end in itself” for Immendorff, but was concerned with the “immediate social impact.
In 2008, Michael Werner, Immendorff”s gallery owner and executor, published a warning that Immendorff”s works were also in the art trade that were not by Immendorff”s hand. These works were said to have been made by assistants according to Immendorff”s ideas. According to the gallery owner, Immendorff then added his signature to them.
In the summer of 2007, widow and heiress Oda Jaune filed a criminal complaint at the behest of Michael Werner regarding an alleged forgery. The painting in question, entitled “Ready-Made d”histoire dans Café de Flore,” was to be auctioned off at a renowned auction house. The Düsseldorf public prosecutor”s office investigated extensively, but found no evidence pointing to a forgery or a criminal offense. The proceedings were discontinued without charges being brought, and the plaintiff was referred to private prosecution. Experts interpret the forgery debate as a market dispute between gallery owners that could not be substantiated with facts. To date, no further charges have been filed, nor have any other works of art by Immendorff been officially classified as forgeries by Michael Werner. As a conclusion of the accusations of forgery, not a single documented case of forgery has been found.
A first Immendorff biography was published in the fall of 2010. The author is Hans Peter Riegel, a longtime companion and confidant of Immendorff. The book focuses on Immendorff”s life up to about 1985.
Riegel explains his need for recognition as a consequence of his youth. His parents separated when he was eleven; he never got over that. He found a coveted over-father in his teacher Joseph Beuys, and an over-mother for a time in his fellow student Chris Reinecke, whose artistic gifts were mediocre. The tough guy – first in leather gear, then in a double-breasted suit – was not as self-confident as he made himself out to be.
“At the beginning of a conversation, he could be very frosty. But the man who had just appeared as a know-it-all could become a doubter shortly afterwards, admitting that he was not so well versed in politics as to judge whether Gerhard Schröder”s soft approach to authoritarian states like Russia or China was right or wrong. Even in the face of criticism of his work, Immendorff was by no means inaccessible away from the public eye.”
Tilman Spengler published a novel about his friend Jörg Immendorff in 2015 (Waghalsiger Versuch, in der Luft zu kleben).
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United Kingdom
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