Cynicism is one of the modes through which art can reflect reality, and it is by using this mode that Martin Kippenberger has made a name for himself. The works he presented to the public beginning in the early ’80s were all series of small paintings whose themes for the most part were taken from our media-filled everyday world. The neutrality of the subject matter corresponded to the neutrality of artistic realization, with its seemingly effortless appropriation of 20th-century painting styles. Compared with the early paintings of Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, which are similarly trivial