A decade after his death, Martin Kippenberger finally became what he longed to be in life: a museum-sanctioned master rather than just a cult provocateur. Though admired by peers and collectors, his volatile persona and refusal to play by institutional rules had kept canonizing at bay. “Martin was not an angel—he had a complex psychological structure—but as an artist he was very precise, very professional in his decisions, totally focused," Cologne gallerist Gisela Capitain explained: "Yet because of his reputation people became scared to work with him.”
