Creativity Quote by Martin Kippenberger

A “really good mood” is a disarmingly small ambition for an artist who built a career on bad manners, provocation, and the kind of self-mythology that usually ends in slogans. Kippenberger’s line works because it dodges the expected claims of significance. No “vision,” no “truth,” no talk of masterpieces. He reframes legacy as vibe. That’s both a joke and a manifesto.

The intent is slyly strategic: if the art world demands seriousness, he offers mood as an aesthetic category. It’s a way of making affect into authorship, turning the artist’s temperament into the work’s through-line. Kippenberger’s practice often treated institutions, styles, and even sincerity as materials to be sampled, mocked, and recombined. In that context, “good mood” isn’t merely cheerfulness; it’s a refusal to be pinned down. He’s proposing a form of greatness that can’t be audited by critics or museum labels.

The subtext carries a sting. To be remembered for a mood is to accept that art history is less a court of law than a gossip network: reputations stick through anecdotes, energies, and the stories people like repeating. Kippenberger, who cultivated the persona of the brash trickster, is also preemptively disarming moral judgment. Don’t weigh me on purity or profundity; remember that I kept the room lively.

In late-20th-century European art, where the performance of intellect could become its own tyranny, this is a calculated lightness. “Really good mood” becomes an alibi, a weapon, and a final prank on posterity.