Apeldoorn, Gemeentelijke van Reekum Galerij, Nieuure Figurative, 1965 Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Figurationen, 1967, no. 102 Berlin, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Aspekte der 60er Jahre: Aus der Sammlung Reinhard Onnasch, 1978
Literature
Bernhard Kerber, Bestände Onnasch, Berlin-Bremen 1992, p. 234, illustrated in colour Exhibition Catalogue, Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld; New York, P. S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Ghent, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ich nenne mich als Maler Konrad Lueg, 1999-2000, p. 90, illustrated in colour
Provenance
Franz Dahlem, Munich Reinhard Onnasch, Berlin Galerie Konrad Fischer, Dusseldorf Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Notes
The present work is one of the defining contributions that Konrad Lueg made to the development of German Pop Art before he gave up being an artist in 1967 and subsequently became one of Germany's most influential gallerists, known as Konrad Fischer. The highly evolved zenith of the Capitalist Realism that Lueg had conceived with Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, and included in Dieter Honisch's defining exhibition Figurationen at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart in 1967, Mann am Tisch exemplifies Guido de Werd's declaration that "Konrad proclaimed Capitalist Realism, and his paintings question art against the background of our consumer society, in the form of patterned wallpapers" (Guido de Werd in: Exhibition Catalogue, Barcelona, Museu d'Art Contemporani, With a Probability of Being Seen. Dorothee and Konrad Fischer: Archives of an Attitude, 2010, p. 157). While Thomas Kellein has suggested that in this painting Lueg depicts a close relative, a sheet of Lueg's source material from The Duerckheim Collection of clippings salvaged from popular mass-media and pasted onto a piece of paper in a way remarkably similar to those of Richter's Atlas, reveals a close resemblance between Lueg's seated man and a headshot of a character called William Boal. With Ronnie Biggs and others, Boal was a member of the gang that committed the Great Train Robbery of 1963, and was sentenced to twenty four years in prison in April 1964 for his part in the crime. Photo-mechanical reproduction and mass distribution ensured that this major international event was reported across the world's media, and this type of source image represents the found-image archetype that was so foundational to the practice of Gerhard Richter, to say nothing of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Lueg's over-painting of the faces in the adjacent photos of other Robbery villains on the source sheet further expounds the faceless anonymity that asks such incisive questions of identity and representation in Mann am Tisch.
Lueg's art underwent a radical change of direction in 1965: from the time of the present work he concentrated exclusively on incorporating pattern into his work, enlisting prefabricated, repetitive schema as the trademark of his subsequent oeuvre. This was in addition to his exclusive working, since 1962, in casein tempera, a rare medium difficult to work in on account of its fast drying time and brittle nature and through which he developed a new visual language constructed of large bold colour-shapes, necessarily designed to suit the constraints of his paint material. Mann am Tisch consists of three underlying patterns, respectively demarcating each of the figure, the table and the wall behind, which were applied using a rubber roller dipped in paint to replicate and multiply the template. The patterns were derived from Fablon designs that were ubiquitously popular in contemporary Germany at the time, miles of their schematic wallpapers adorning middle-class kitchens and dining rooms across West Germany. As Thomas Kellein has argued, by appropriating this cultural heritage "Lueg was paying homage to an emblematic domesticity that industrial Germany was threatening to forget at the time" (in: Exhibition Catalogue, Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld; New York, P. S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Ghent, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ich nenne mich als Maler Konrad Lueg, 1999-2000, p. 31). The patterns became so identified with Lueg that in December 1966, he decorated the whole of Alfred Schmela's gallery with the design. The veteran gallerist had had to give up his premises in Hunsrückenstrasse, which galvanised his stable of artists to organise a week of events in homage. On Sunday 11υth December from 4pm Lueg organised the happening 'Kaffee und Kuchen' ('Coffee and Cake'), for which he papered the room with wallpaper of the same idiosyncratic design as that on the table of the present work, while Richter's portrait of the gallerist hung on the wall at the end of a long table.
Lueg had studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, initially under Bruno Goller until 1960 and then in Karl Otto Götz' painting class, where he met and befriended Richter, Polke and Manfred Kuttner. After the joint exhibition with them at the deserted storefront at 31 Kaiserstrasse in May 1963, his first one-man exhibition came in July 1964 at the Schmela Gallery. Indeed, foreshadowing his later career, during this time Lueg helped Schmela in his gallery often, which was virtually the only outlet of Contemporary Art in Dusseldorf at that time, and accompanied him on trips to Paris. In November 1964 he was central to the legendary exhibition at Rudolf Jahrling's Gallerie Parnass in Wuppertal, together with Richter and Polke. In short, his unique response to Pop Art and contribution to Capitalist Realism was a major influence on the development of Contemporary Art in West Germany in this period. In this context his fantastically successful and important career as a gallery owner, or rather as he preferred to be known, an 'exhibitions organiser', can be seen as an extension of his prodigious and urgent need to create and invent. While Carl Andre has declared of Lueg that "He was a genius. Like one of those great Hollywood producers, Konrad knew how to gather the right people and get them what they needed to do their work. He was a tremendous facilitator" (cited in: Daniel Birnbaum, "Art and the Deal", Artforum, February 2000, p. 17), Gerhard Richter has observed that "Fischer viewed his activities as a gallerist as art, too. He never called himself a gallerist. Conceptually the exhibitions were like readymades for him. The exhibition became his art form." (cited in: Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago and London 2009, p. 151)
