On March 26, 2016, renowned critic Isabelle Graw presented a new talk entitled, “Here I Am, That Must Be Enough.” The presentation featured the relationship between people and products, and the special status of painting as it is treated through the work of Martin Kippenberger.

Isabelle Graw is an internationally renowned critic whose work has advanced the understanding of art criticism and the art market; judgment and value-creation; and trace and agency in painting. She is a professor of art theory and art history at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste, Frankfurt. She founded Texte zur Kunst in 1990 with Stefan Germer, with whom Graw has co-edited and produced 100 issues to date. In 2003, she co-founded the Institut für Kunstkritik at the Städelschule with Daniel Birnbaum. Graw’s current fields of interest include criticism and its markets; judgment and value-creation under new forms of capitalism; and trace and agency in painting. Graw currently lives and works in Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany.

Part of Idea 005: Self-Made Man

Self-determination is a foundational cultural belief, particularly in American mythology, and characterized by faith in meritocracy, middle class self-expression and freedom of choice. John Miller’s work has frequently focused on the figure, and its life in social spaces, in order to point out the material reality that forms us all. Consumption and communication play key roles in constructing our “selves,” as witnessed by Miller’s interest in the banal and the everyday. Through his mannequins, material artifacts and photography, Miller poses a challenge: can the “self-made man” create the conditions that surround, determine and produce us?