(born in Liberec in 1941)
Othello in front of Vases, 1996, artist´s monogram ML, mixed media on muslin, 200 x 162.5 cm, 211 x 173 cm (with artist frame), framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany

In the mid-1980s, Markus Lüpertz began his work as an artist with a series in which he dealt with great painters of art history such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Nicolas Poussin and literary-musical themes such as Parsifal and Othello. The Othello Cycle, named after the opera of the same name by Giuseppe Verdi, has its origins in Shakespeare’s play. It tells the story of the dark-skinned general Othello, who, out of delusional jealousy and fuelled by the schemer Iago, first kills his wife Desdemona and then himself.
The painting offered was neither titled nor dated by Markus Lüpertz. The motif, however, clearly shows that it is one of the works from the Othello series, which was exhibited in 1996 at the Thaddeus Ropac Gallery in Salzburg. The Othello cycle consists of several oil paintings, watercolours and bronzes, all of which are independent works. In each work, Markus Lüpertz deals with the main characters of this drama, depicting a motif several times in varying ways.
The red vase in the middle right background of the picture is only schematically arranged and in the upper part of the picture Markus Lüpertz has left a broad, horizontal white bar in which he places his signature ML. The viewer is invited to imagine the remainder of the painting for himself. “Each painting is unfinished, otherwise I wouldn’t have had to paint the next one. Every picture, every sculpture has a flaw somewhere. You just have to make sure that you fail at a high level and not when you’re at the bottom. It is the flaw, the failure that makes art accessible and interesting, because the viewer must be drawn into the problems within the picture. The viewer is very important for art, without him art does not exist.”
(Markus Lüpertz in an interview in ‘Die Zeit’ 16 April 2015)

The figure of Shakespeare’s Othello dominates the foreground. He devours Desdemona, whose red lower leg protrudes out of his mouth. “The artist tries to avoid communicating and solving the problems within the image, because the viewer has to take hold of and invent the content of the picture for himself. The artist merely creates the defect, the wound, the crisis, from which the question of the content arises. It is not the responsibility of the artist to explain the content, that would be a compromise. It is available as a lie and as resource and it is possible as a trap.”
Markus Lüpertz 2009

R: “Can you learn art?”
ML: “No, it is a defect you have. You are born an artist, the good Lord chooses these people. You’re damned. When you have this rare exceptional talent, you have an obligation to make art and to keep making it. Alongside it comes competition with others, artists who are also excellent. We are not competing for commercial success, but for success in art ...”
(Markus Lüpertz in an interview in ‘Die Zeit’ 16 April 2015)