Lot 751 R

Jonathan Meese's large-format work “Martin von Essebeck ist Saalgott” is a gigantic hotchpotch of colours, photographic collage, figurative depictions, symbols and references to characters in films and classical music - without any regard to political correctness. “Martin von Essenbeck”, who gave the work its title, is a character from Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969), a family saga which was highly controversial when it was first shown. It was about the rise and fall of a German industrialist family at the time of the Nazis, with specific references to real life that were definitely intended both by Visconti and by Meese. In “Clockwork Orange” Meese refers to Stanley Kubrick's powerful cinematic spectacle of the same name whose protagonist and now cult figure, Alex DeLarge, features in numerous works by Meese. As Harald Falckenberg explains, Meese deliberately uses provocation and breaches of taboos as tools of artistic rebellion and in fact intends them to be understood as such: “People can feel […] - and indeed they accept - that this is an artist at work who, whether through fiction or myth, insists on his own autonomy and on his right to proclaim his abstruse ideological tenets. As one of the few young people among artists, Meese opposes the claim of Context Art to be the only one with a valid claim. He counters any intellectualising interpretations and tactical positioning with immediacy and authenticity.” (Harald Falckenberg, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Das Phänomen Jonathan Meese, in: Carsten Ahrens und Carl Haenlein (ed.), Jonathan Meese, Revolution, Hanover 2002, p.31).