Jonathan Meese

Jonathan Meese stumbled late into the art world

Jonathan Reese was born on 23 January 1970 in Tokyo, the third child of the Welsh banker Reginald Selby Meese and his German wife Brigitte Renate Meese. Whilst his father remained in Japan until his death, Jonathan returned with his mother and siblings to Germany in the mid-1970s and moved into a flat in Hamburg. Having only spoken English up until then, Meese understood hardly a word of German and initially struggled immensely to fit in, and in addition was classed as a “late developer”. Following a disastrous attempt to study economics, Meese turned to art at the age of 22, asked for pencils and a sketchbook for his birthday, and took courses in etching and drawing. Meese abandoned his art lessons under Franz Erhard Walther at the Kunsthochschule in Hamburg without graduating, but still received a contract from the gallerists Bruno Bunnet and Nicole Hackert, mediated by the painter Daniel Richter. The young artist opened his first solo exhibition in Galerie Buchholz in Cologne, titled the “Glockenschrei nach Deutz”.

Jonathan Meese focused early on provocation

Jonathan Meese reached a wider audience in 1998 at the Berlin Biennale and immediately attracted international attention with his radical art. He presented an installation with the provocative title “Ahoi der Angst”, with the Marquis de Sade as its theme, and which confronted the visitors with photo collages of Klaus Kinski, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nina Hagen and Oscar Wilde, accompanied by a choice of music, poems by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, or a video viewing of the film Caligula. A collective of controversial elements which would later accompany the artist and prove programmatic for his further career. The press at home and abroad commented on and analysed this memorable premier which fitted well with the self-concept of the egocentric artist who from then on celebrated invitations from Switzerland, Austria, England and France. 

Jonathan Meese loves the play with dark symbols

Jonathan Meese holds the view that art should be permitted anything – and in order to comprehensively sound out the limits of what is possible, he likes to play with loaded symbols, even exhibiting the Hitler salute, which is banned in Germany and Austria, in his performances. That is after all not his opinion, but only art – and art is allowed to do anything, the artist says. He even sees the term dictatorship as positive, in the context of art. This “dictatorship of art” is then, however, a governance of love, beauty and humility – though it is precisely this last attribute that his critics deny Meese. Jonathan Meese himself makes no secret of his elite understanding of art which rejects everything useable and pleasing and considers only self-sufficient art to be worthy.