Gerhard Richter, twisted clay faces, a sacrilegious frog, and reinterpretation coming soon to LA!

Good news all you Angelenos! Gerhard Richter is coming to town. Nicolas Berggruen, son of the famous art collector Heinz Berggruen has scrapped his plans to build a museum in Berlin and is in stead sending a number famous well known German paintings to Los Angeles on long term loans instead. He will be sending works by influential German artists like Thomas Schütte, Martin Kippenberger, Gerhard Richter and Joseph Beuys to help Los Angeles, whom he says, "is still a developing culture center". Other than that ego crushing dig, LA should be happy to receive some of these guys work.

We know about Gerhard, a star of the Leibnizian Ramblings blog because of his prolific work with the blur, but what over these other guys?

Schütte actually trained with our pal Gerhard at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and is mainly a sculptor. He, like Gerhard, is a living German artist that continues to shape the contemporary art world. His sculptures often resemble the claymation of that Tool video "Sober".

Kippenberger put out massive amount of work before his early death in 1997. He never adopted a single style, or even a medium and that helped him to put out as much work as he did in his short 44 years. When he wasn't being an absolutely sacrilegious nightmare (he put a frog on a cross and called it "Fred the frog rings the bell"), he used his sarcasm and wit better than most artists. My favorite came from 1989, after he was accused of being a neo-Nazi sympathizer by a German critic named Wolfgang Faust (that is an incredibly German name by the way, well played by patriotic parents) Kippenberger made a statue of himself and placed it facing its nose in a corner. The statue's name is "Martin, into the corner, you should be ashamed of yourself". Oh the sarcasm tastes delightful.

Last on our list from Berggruen's blessings is Joseph Beuys. Beuys was a little bit older than the other three and while he played around with performance art, our favorite part about Beuys was his ideas. In addition to being an artist, he was an art theorist that had a penchant for the dramatic. As part of his mystique as an artist he often would (and this is a friendly way of putting it) reinterpret his own history to better fit the art he was in the process of. The best reinterpretation comes from his time in the Luftwaffe in WWII. He was shot down in Crimea and according to eyewitnesses was rescued by a German commando shortly after the plane crashed. When Beuys tells the story he is found four days after the crash by nomadic Tartars who took him into their tents, wrapped him in animal fat and saved his life. Reinterpretation in the most delicious of ways.

So Angelenos you must get over to Los Angeles County Museum of Art and thank Nicolas Berggruen for his wonderful endowment.