Art in D-Town

Art in D-Town
Oil on canvas
2000
250 x 170 cm

In conjuction with the "Kunstpunkte 1999",the Office of Culture in Düsseldorf invited the participating artists to provide a drawing on the theme of "Kunststadt Düsseldorf"("town of arts"). My subsequent contribution was then the reason to realise this idea in a large oil painting.

The curtains opens,a mysterious female figure,clad in gold: Art Personified,enters the stage an is received by
-on the left: Köbes (Köbes is a term for the waiters in all the pubs of Düsseldorf and Cologne) who hands,officiously,hands her a glass of Altbier (Düsseldorf´s traditional beer),symbolic of his crudeness;he steps,however,on her dress,
-on the right: a jubilating cheer-leader from Rhein-Fire ("Rhein-Fire" is the name of the Düsseldorf American Football team) and
-in the middle: the Prince of Carnival (his face familiar to,if not borrowed by,the Carnival President Jürgen Pagalies) who appears to be more interested in the fulfilling of his earthly desires,shown by his groping for the beer glass of Köbes and flirting with the cheer-leader.

Specific Düsseldorf motives pop up
-top left: frame and style of writing of the plate "Art in D-Town",leaning heavily on the handwriting of the Apollo Variete and
-at the bottom: the floor design which is modelled on the road surfacing of the Rhine riverbank promenade.

The pidgeons,at the bottom,are the actual artists: they search (to the left) for small crumbs of gold and devour (to the right) three worms in the shape of the number 744 (this being the number of the current of the Rhine in kilometres at Düsseldorf´s Old Town).