Die Basis des Make-Up

Drawing (136) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

Drawing (403) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Uniform advertising and advertising uniforms. The battle of the sexes as a more or less entertaining circus number in a department store catalogue. Something hard to grasp for homosexuals, unless one also declares the degrees of difference within one sex to be battle positions. Pairings of stiff men’s shorts and smooth women’s skirts pressed between clothing rails. The shorts here akin to an empty avant-garde, watched by a pair of long suit trousers in the background.  Pop culture will once again be begging for “a man, a real man”, who the USA have already received in the form of Donald Trump, who happens to be of German origin. Nothing against the smart Friedrich Hollaender, who has always had a good nose. Harvey Weinstein, who converted the casting coach into a shower, will rise again as a Jesus of an awkward physicality, and his autobiography will soon break all records. Then it will no longer be #MeToo, but rather just #I’mIn." (From: arsenal july/august 18).

(1976) 

Drawing (601) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The World: a trouser fly. Transparent: the closed fly of a pair of non-iron suit trousers. Love as work: a model of a ship held out in front of a couple conducting sexual intercourse in the missionary position who had neither the time nor the desire to remove their clothes beforehand. The areas of black were leftover pieces of paper on a Polaroid negative of the scenery. RO ID = the unvarnished ID, the arrangement and agreement to be allowed to resemble an animal. Harvey Weinstein should convert to Christianity, then all would be forgiven. His infringements were long since known to each and every person working in film, ante delictum too. The journalistic fuss now suddenly being woven around his despicable role contains all the ingredients for a new McCarthyism. A foretaste of this could already be experienced at the Think:Film-Congress in 2012, when Traité de bave et d’éternité (1951) by Isidore Isou suddenly fell out of favor with Andrea Dworkin aficionados." (From: arsenal, june 18).

(1988) 

Drawing (267) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Mood Circle, a cycle of unpredictable moods; Doom Clerc the one who deciphers unavoidable disasters; all according to the old drawing Mood Circle Mona Cries from 1971, the year in which everything spun out of control. A Stabil Construction Set–canoe damned to suffer shipwreck as a symbol of the university studies I never completed. The column that holds the sculpture of a man from the Russian barracks in Wünsdorf extends all the way up to the clouds. A great tidal wave that comes to a point at its crest rushes towards the column on dry land. Tepid Western decadence: while driving past the military complex, we threw porno mags at the recruits who had to sweep the path there. And that after friends in Prague complained that we’d only brought oranges with us rather than the copies of the Spiegel they’d asked for. Even today, the fruit seem to me a more sensible gift than such tabloid and the porno mags made immediate sense – a hidden reference to Klossowski’s La monnaie vivante that had just been published." (From: arsenal, may 18).

(1996)

Drawing (295) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Mood Circle, a cycle of unpredictable moods; Doom Clerc the one who deciphers unavoidable disasters; all according to the old drawing Mood Circle Mona Cries from 1971, the year in which everything spun out of control. A Stabil Construction Set–canoe damned to suffer shipwreck as a symbol of the university studies I never completed. The column that holds the sculpture of a man from the Russian barracks in Wünsdorf extends all the way up to the clouds. A great tidal wave that comes to a point at its crest rushes towards the column on dry land. Tepid Western decadence: while driving past the military complex, we threw porno mags at the recruits who had to sweep the path there. And that after friends in Prague complained that we’d only brought oranges with us rather than the copies of the Spiegel they’d asked for. Even today, the fruit seem to me a more sensible gift than such tabloid and the porno mags made immediate sense – a hidden reference to Klossowski’s La monnaie vivante that had just been published." (From: arsenal, may 18).

(1996) 

Drawing (197) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"An officer from Anti Terror Unit GSG 9 on a fishing hook abseils down into a maelstrom. Above him, carved in wood by Hokusai, a real whopper of a wave, also known as a tidal wave, tsunami or groundswell. The bamboo fishing rod from which the officer is suspended floats before the backdrop of a granite memorial which exalts the forms of bourgeois arithmetic as a basic anthropological constant and carries the title “10 percent minus 5 percent equals 5 percent”. To the bottom right, parts of the back of a piece of bronze ornamentation from the National Farmer’s Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota designed by Louis H. Sullivan in 1906, and on the left a gay tea dancer hastily fleeing the scene at the Metropol in Berlin at the beginning of the 90s. For a long time already, there can be no more talk of the self-evident beauty of the body. It’s already agreed that today’s Narcissus is repulsed by his own beauty if he didn’t indeed feel like that from the very start. A mirror does its bit with the metallic taste it produces when you lick its back. (From: arsenal, april 18).

(1994) 

Drawing (333) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"An officer from Anti Terror Unit GSG 9 on a fishing hook abseils down into a maelstrom. Above him, carved in wood by Hokusai, a real whopper of a wave, also known as a tidal wave, tsunami or groundswell. The bamboo fishing rod from which the officer is suspended floats before the backdrop of a granite memorial which exalts the forms of bourgeois arithmetic as a basic anthropological constant and carries the title “10 percent minus 5 percent equals 5 percent”. To the bottom right, parts of the back of a piece of bronze ornamentation from the National Farmer’s Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota designed by Louis H. Sullivan in 1906, and on the left a gay tea dancer hastily fleeing the scene at the Metropol in Berlin at the beginning of the 90s. For a long time already, there can be no more talk of the self-evident beauty of the body. It’s already agreed that today’s Narcissus is repulsed by his own beauty if he didn’t indeed feel like that from the very start. A mirror does its bit with the metallic taste it produces when you lick its back." (From: arsenal, april 18).

(1994) 

Drawing (356) from DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Permutations and emissions, from one center to another: quantum theoretical forms of life, measured neither before nor after. A chimera appearing in the upper corner of a university office at SUNY Binghamton (Babylon), before a dark-colored curtain, a bed of nails, and fluorescent tubes. 1975: the sketch of a journey from Albuquerque to Phoenix, Arizona, marked out within the contours of a Stetson Melone. An apparition in the desert dust by the side of the highway just outside of El Centro: my worn-out shoes without laces, negative small, positive large, between huge piles of rounded-off stone. When you go cold turkey, you question everything. I was sweating despite the cool air of the bus and was trying to sleep. Until now, everyone has cast the first stone, I dreamt. What’s the point of leading the life of a rock star without the necessary resources? I was broke, but I was young and could still turn a trick, in a system where the labor force is infinitely liberated. And things like this are then referred to as utopia, beyond any sort of serfdom." (From: arsenal, march 18).

(1977)

Drawing (369) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Permutations and emissions, from one center to another: quantum theoretical forms of life, measured neither before nor after. A chimera appearing in the upper corner of a university office at SUNY Binghamton (Babylon), before a dark-colored curtain, a bed of nails, and fluorescent tubes. 1975: the sketch of a journey from Albuquerque to Phoenix, Arizona, marked out within the contours of a Stetson Melone. An apparition in the desert dust by the side of the highway just outside of El Centro: my worn-out shoes without laces, negative small, positive large, between huge piles of rounded-off stone. When you go cold turkey, you question everything. I was sweating despite the cool air of the bus and was trying to sleep. Until now, everyone has cast the first stone, I dreamt. What’s the point of leading the life of a rock star without the necessary resources? I was broke, but I was young and could still turn a trick, in a system where the labor force is infinitely liberated. And things like this are then referred to as utopia, beyond any sort of serfdom." (From: arsenal, march 18).

(1977) 

Drawing (394) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Feet kept on the ground by weights, the lines on their soles can be read just like the ones that appear on the hands. A combinatorial arrangement of squares that fails due to its own complexity. What is the task of the arts in the 21^st century, asks the Akademie der Künste. Art stems from the necessity to expand languages and concepts, to carry out research on them in experimental fashion, and provide a record of this process. It cannot expect understanding or sympathy here, to say nothing of taking them for granted or even begging for them. Art should not regard itself as social work and thus discredit the professions of the social worker or designer. The German word Aufgabe (giving up) might imply that art would be abandoned were it to raise its head high in independence. Yet art has no tasks, nor should it be allocated any by critics and curators in political fashion to monitor their enforcement. If artists chose to set themselves tasks or accept them, that’s their own business. The concept of the 21^st century is an untenable disposition." (From: arsenal, february 18).

(1977)