Nine Reasons to Raise the Prices
- Artist: Martin Kippenberger
- Date: 1987
- Medium: Screenprint on paper
- Dimensions: image: 827 x 583 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Nine Reasons to Raise the Prices” by Martin Kippenberger, a 1987 screenprint on paper. It was printed to promote a lecture at the Art and Design School in Cologne on November 9, 1987, featuring Kippenberger and his German collaborator Albert Oehlen. In the image the two stand beside a boat that’s run aground, both wearing oversized white underpants with dressing gowns hanging over their left arms. The pose is a playful nod to David Douglas Duncan’s 1962 photograph of Pablo Picasso in similar garb, a visual shorthand for masculinity, artistic fame and the inevitability of aging.
Kippenberger’s 178 posters spanned exhibitions, parties and lectures, and this one falls into the third folio of his “Good Regression Needs No Excuses” series, published in 1988 in a limited run of twenty‑five. The poster is a good example of his humor, social critique and willingness to blur the lines between art and advertisement.
See it in person
Nine Reasons to Raise the Prices is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
