Lot 540 D

'That happened a long time ago. I still remember exactly a scene in the studio, a self-portrait in which a monkey is sitting behind my back and paints into the picture over my shoulder. He paints something quite different on the painting. The monkey was thus once an invention of alter ego, more like an appeal to myself not to take certain things too seriously, and others more seriously than I had done previously. Self-critique among us has fallen into disuse. You have to develop criteria of judgement out of a critical process. If I cannot be self-critical, I also cannot take part in a more intensive critical discussion, for that is the precondition. That tends to be my approach. The monkey pops up everywhere in Chinese history of art, and also in European art. I mention just two names: Goya and Picasso. The monkey crops up everywhere. With William Hogarth it is interesting that he worked up stylistic elements he adopted from his colleagues; he simply occupied them. He was a kind of robber baron and was often portrayed in caricatures as an ape, a copyist. Perhaps I inherited the interest from my grandfather who lived in Africa for a long time and introduced me as a small boy to Wilhelm Busch´s 'Fips the Monkey'.' (Jörg Immendorff in an interview with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, in: Anette Hüsch and Hans-Klaus Schuster (ed.), Jörg Immendorff, Male Lago, Cologne 2005, p.2)