Susi Pop
Ulrike Meinhof's mustache, 1995/2001

Artist
Susi Pop

Title
The mustache of Ulrike Meinhof

Year of creation
1995/2001

Technique and dimensions
screen print on canvas, 15 parts

Year of acquisition
2003

On October 18, 1977, the bodies of Andreas Baader, Jan Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin were found in the high-security wing of the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. That was an important day in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany and the initial student protest movement of the 1968 generation had finally reached its bitter end. Nine years later, between March and November 1988, Gerhard Richter painted fifteen oil paintings in order to use his resources to take up an unfinished case in modern history that had occupied him for years.

Because of their succinct casualness, they are deeply disturbing images in black and white, and Richter said when he completed the cycle on October 18, 1977, in order to underline the metaphorical meaning of these images and his ideological commitment, that the cycle could never become an object of the art market. In 1995, however, he sold the cycle to the Museum of Modern Art New York for an unknown sum of millions.

Susi Pop made a pink cover version of the 15 images using screen printing on canvas and gave it the title The Mustache of Ulrike Meinhof. The reference to Marcel Duchamp, who added a mustache and goatee to Leonardo's Mona Lisa in 1919, raises yet another question about the ambivalent relationship between model and reproduction and is reminiscent of one of the most prominent falls from grace in politically moving art of the post-war period. The credibility of the art world and the artist are shaken. The pink version of Susi Pop brings the images back and continues to convey the original power of Richter's cycle.

Britta Schmitz