decreet 03 juni 2010108
As we move up to the third floor, where the artist
has installed his private quarters, we pass a terrace
facing north. Stepping outside, I notice it has
stopped snowing and a full moon is shining over the
skyline of Berlin. Just when we approach the fence
of this extended balcony, the U-bahn from Wilmers-
dorf direction Kreuzberg moves past, maybe two
meters apart from us. Station Gleis Dreieck is just
about fifty meters away. Passengers in the train do
not see us, neither does the waiting public on the
nearby ramps. The whole atmosphere is sort of sur
realistic, bringing back the imagery of a Delvaux,
the Belgian painter from the nineteen thirties, that
combined dreamy nudes, railway stations and men
dressed in raincoats and boulders. I ask Jiri about a
younger Belgian artist Wim Delvoix, whom he met
in Brussels 1985.
According to a recent interview in a magazine called White Raven [6], Dokoupil made quite an impression on Delvoix, who
just left art school. Dokoupil showed up at a Brussels tv-talkshow with a bodyguard and a manager, which freaked out
Delvoix completely. Wiping the sweat of his face with a towel, Jiri bursts out in laughter. Yes, I remember Delvoix.
He was a good artist. I liked his Delft blue paintings on circular sawing blades. It was extremely radical. Somehow it
reminded me of the Zeitgeist of the early eighties." [7]
You know, next week I am going to meet the front man of the legendary performance group minus delta t. For me the whole
new spirit in art started in Frankfurt 1983, when I witnessed a concert in a pop auditorium from a balcony. During the
interlude between two punk bands, there was a ten minute act of minus delta t. Three men, in long black leather coats,
their hands tied on their back, controlling a crowd of five hundred stoned and drunk punks, just by closing in on them
and biting and growling like young dogs, until all were driven into a corner."
When we reach the third floor, Jiri starts to relax. "Let's sit down and talk. I'll make you some hot dog with mustard and beer.
It's time I start cooking." While Dokoupil moves around in the kitchen, me and the trainer check out the apartment. It
has the same old Dokoupil atmosphere of all the other dwellings I visited in Cologne, Madrid, Prague. The super clean
industrial^floor. Classical music from a simple magic box, a small library with catalogues on Rodin, Cezanne and
Matisse. New is the industrial design of the space. Metal shiny doors, long white cotton curtains covering the windows,
an old beaten up beautiful smooth curved DDR design table from the sixties. Vintage eighteen eighties remade rococo
Louis XV chairs, that have been moved a hundred times and seen all the corners of the civilized world. A modern white
leather coach for the afternoon nap. Symmetrical rows of white Spanish light bulbs, bathing the salon into a nice cozy
living room. After the trainer has left, Jiri appears with the food. "You know, these last months I have been growing fat
and thinking about when and how to stop working for the first time in my life. I mean this in a very neutral way. I have
a son, who is nineteen. He is fascinated by Japanese culture, the way of the Samoerai. Moving slow, moving fast.
Timing." As we start our sober dinner, Dokoupil gathers breath for the final statements, "it is really important what
you eat with whom, it is the journey, not the destination, the last move or step is not interesting. Art, like anything
in life, is about the unfinished perfection. Too much is never enough. I have been thinking about all the notebooks I kept
over the last thirty years. So many concepts for paintings projects, art videos, tacky installations, social documentaries,
psychological stories, that were never executed. I did the one thing I had to, not all the things I could have done. Maybe
later. I am not sure. There is still doubt. Should I quit alcohol, coffee and meat? I feel that I am moving towards a new
phase in my life. Concentration on handmade art work by the artist himself. This is what the market really needs. I had
a dream last night. I was talking to my parents about where to go on this earth. Go to Canada they said, that's where it is
all happening in the future art world. Take all your catalogues and show them your work. Really, Canada is the place to
be, when you really want to be a successful artist.-So I went. I do not remember the city I was in. It could have been
Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, or Vancouver.
I arrived at an enormous art party. There were a thousand of the best artists of the world, all partying in a big city hall.
Bright lights, champagne, good music, beautiful girls. Here I was with all my catalogues. I felt lonely. I did not know
anybody. Then I looked ajround. In a corner, between two columns stood a older man with a familiar face, his hair
combed in a strange way.
P»K0vp|V
I mean it was combed to the left side
over his head, as if to cover a starting
baldness. It was Picasso, sixty years
old, in 1940, at the beginning of the
war. I went over to him and asked him
why he was here in Canada and if he
wanted to look at my catalogues.
He looked at me and smiled. Skipped
through the catalogues. Well, is my
work any good, I asked. Sure, Sure,
Picasso said, in a soft, quite way. It is
ok. But you must remember, mister
Dokoupil, art is the most conserva
tive thing in the world."
How true. Picasso had said that art is the elimination of the unnecessary. "Let's call it day,"I said and pushed the stop button
of the digital voice recorder. So much for the record. Dokoupil agreed. Enough enough. "W'll grab a taxi and get
something to eat at this thai restaurant in Bergstrasse, Kreuzberg. Meanwhile we can keep on talking off the record."
So we did. In the taxi, zipping along Landwehrkanal Jiri asked me how our mutual friend Rob Scholte was doing. He
had seen him on the Berlin Art Fair and Rob wanted to collaborate on a new project again. But Dokoupil had declined.
"I could never work with Scholte again, after he accused of being the bad genius behind that carbombattack in
Amsterdam. I told him I was sorry, but the answer was no." I looked outside the window when the car was taking a left
turn onto Yorkstrasse, with its sleazy sexbars and pimps driving along in their fat BMW's or Mercedes. I said, "I don't
want to talk about anymore. Remember your collaboration with Scholte on that installation in august 1987 in La Vie en
Rose brothelAmsterdam, red light district? Well, that was the beginning of the end. Afterwards we were all driving
back to Cologne with Rainer Opoku. It was a very hot day. So to kill some time I asked you guys to do me a small drawing
of a window." [8] But Dokoupil did not remember. I donated the drawings to a guy, called Max I rented a studio from at
the time. He was accused too of being the bad genius behind a carbomb attack. So was I. It was all a sad story. Dokoupil
had invited me to Cologne to try out a new experimental way of painting with car tires. We had a lot of fun jumping
about the big canvasses with tires bumping and rolling all over the place. I took a canvas home with me. "Here is present
for you,said Dokoupil, for back in Amsterdam, when times are getting rough." As a matter of fact, two months later,
in Japan, as manager of the Scholte painting crew at a big commission in Holland Nagasaki Village, I accused of stealing
money from the company, that was meant for paying the electric bills. I had given the money, some 500 euro's to the
Japanese translator in order to avoid the bureaucracy and he had put it in his own pocket, as turned out five years later.
But Scholte insisted I gave him the cartrax painting Dokoupil and me had done together. If not I would be discharged
from the company dishonorably and sent back to Holland immediately. So I did give Scholte the painting. After the
bombing our mutual friend had put it up for auction at Christie's and sold it for a lot of money to an accounting
company, who hanged it in their board of directors room at the Frederiks Square, opposite the National Dutch Bank.
When I told the stoiy to Dokoupil, he cracked up with laughter. "Come back tomorrow, and we'll play some more ping
pong as you call it. If you win, I'll sign you a ball, you can sell. It should be worth a lot of money by the time you finish
your book."
Notes
[1] Kunstzeitung 158/Oktober 2009, p. 3Entsorgte Saisonartikel, Was ist aus den Stars geworden, fragt Hans-Joachim Müller.
[2] Koos Dalstra, The Studio, in Jiri Georg Dokoupil, Every Cloud is a way, catalogue Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2000, p. 158-165.
[3] Sebastian Frenzel, "Der Freie Radikale," Monopol, Magazin für Kunst und Leben, nr. 4, april 2010.
[4] Victor Bockris, The life and death of Andy Warhol, 1989, chapter 14, p. 367, Andy Warhol:" Sunday with mr. C.", unpublished manuscript.
In Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Capote, 1985, there is no mention of a tape recorded interview session by Andy Warhol of
Truman Capote.
[5] Arrugadismo: a rough, unpolished style of wrinkled imagery. From Spanish: papa arugado, potato boiled in its shell. Dokoupil developed
the new style in 1999 in Berlin, 10years after the After Nature Manifesto from Madrid. He copied an image of, for example, a showering girl,
wrinkled the copy and copied that again and again, until the image was to his satisfaction and then painted it with a candle.
[6] Witte Raaf, nr. 4,2009.
[7] Spirit of the time, referring to the proliferation of styles in painting (neo-expressionism, neo-geo, dirty realism, abstract figuration)
after conceptualism and minimalism went out of fashion late 70s, early 80s.
[8] Anthony Haden-Guest, True Colors, The real Life of the Art World, 1996, pp. 102-104,213-214,216,219.
7V.3 by 1JU.5 cm.
Painted in 1987.
Provenance:
Aquired direcdy from the artist
Exhibited
Rome, Catena Alessandro
Bonomo, 1988
Dfl.6.000-8.000
611 Georg Jiri Dokoupil
(born 1954)
CARTRAX
signed and dated 1991
acrylic on canvas
186 by 290,5 cm.
Provenance:
Acquired from Koos Dalstra,
Amsterdam
Dfl. 8.000-12.000
i28.5.1987 sieben spontane schwarze formen
decreet 031 juni 2010109
