In his paintings, sculptures, and large-scale installations, Martin Kippenberger often used appropriation as a strategy, co-opting the work of others or reusing his own. Content on Tour (1992) is the result of a multistage process that began in 1989 when Kippenberger asked his assistant to make a group of paintings based on a series of his existing works. After deeming the copies “too good,” Kippenberger decided to destroy them, but this apparent end was just the beginning. Several works resulted, among them sculptures of industrial containers, made to house the smashed-up, discarded works. Content on Tour is based on a photograph of the destroyed paintings in one of the containers. Perhaps acknowledging the perversity of the final product—prints based on a photograph of a sculpture containing paintings—Kippenberger described the effect as “a kind of double kitsch,” appropriations of an appropriation.
Kippenberger editioned Content on Tour in a rather unconventional way, maintaining a few full sheets and cutting the others down into three smaller variants, each of which he then mounted to plywood and uniquely altered using a hand saw. All four variants are presented here.