Total Service Artists

“What is art?” hasn’t been an interesting question for a long time, but the query “What is it that artists do?” might be. We know that artists make art, but what about all the other things they do as artists? I’m not thinking here of the many artists who operate in expanded fields, artists whose creative process might involve running large workshops, consulting with scientists or designating some daily transaction as a work of art. What I have in mind, rather, is someone like the late Martin Kippenberger, who presented himself in a strikingly prescient way as a “total service” artist. I borrow the term from Diedrich Diederichsen, who, in his introduction to Uwe Koch’s 2003 catalogue raisonné of Kippenberger’s books, identified the German artist’s “total service concept, according to which none of the procedures connected with the production and sale of the visual arts—invitations, opening, party, food, meetings with art collectors, studio visits, the artist’s clothing and the clothing of his associates, posters and other PR/advertising methods and finally catalogues—could be left up to professionals or to routine.”