Pop Art Calendar
- Artist: Martin Kippenberger
- Date: 1991
- Medium: 12 works on paper, printed papers on printed paper
- Dimensions: support, each: 342 × 290 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Pop Art Calendar” by Martin Kippenberger, created in 1991 as a series of twelve collages, one for each month. The works are a playful mash‑up of popular culture and high art. Kippenberger started with black‑and‑white photographs from a naturist magazine, cutting circular holes into them. Through those holes you see vibrant colour reproductions of famous pop‑art works taken from a corporate calendar produced by Deutsche Bank. Artists represented include Allen Jones, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and Peter Blake, among others.
The technique shows Kippenberger’s fascination with appropriation and the blurring of authorial boundaries. He layers the images, creating a dialogue between the sensual, candid feel of the naturist shots and the iconic, commercialised pop‑art pieces. The result is simultaneously humorous and critical, inviting viewers to question the relationship between commercial imagery, art, and everyday life. It’s a clever visual pun that turns a mundane calendar into a layered commentary on cultural consumption.
See it in person
Pop Art Calendar 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.
