THE EMINENT SPEAKERS at the September opening of Jörg Immendorff’s Neue Nationalgalerie retrospective “Male Lago: Unsichtbarer Beitrag” (Male Lago: Invisible Contribution), included Gerhard Schröder, who just a few days earlier, on the eve of Germany’s federal elections, had made a remarkable appearance on national television. Clearly exhausted after weeks of campaign battles he still exuberantly claimed to be the only person in the country able to form a government. By the time of the opening, despite the fact that most voters had actually cast their ballots for the various parties of the Left,

Dear Annika,

I’m so glad you finally found the kindest artist in the world, the Finnish painter Jukka Korkeila. It was clever to describe the trials and tribulations of your long search in The letter to Anna (all works 2005), an enlarged missive, complete with huge coffee stains, which was strategically hung near a video portrait of Jukka standing in a snowy field in Belgrade, where you met him last winter.

I met Jukka years ago in Berlin, and I agree he is very kind (and paints the best melting ice cream cones). But the kindest artist in the world? True, he was kind enough to stand around in the