Creativity Quote by Martin Kippenberger

Kippenberger’s line lands like a shrug that’s secretly a jab. Coming from an artist who made a career out of provocation, pastiche, and institutional side-eye, “You really can’t bring about anything new with art” isn’t an anti-art surrender so much as a booby trap for the modern myth of the avant-garde. The word “really” does the dirty work: it mocks the earnest belief that art is a clean engine of progress, that originality is a moral good, that the next gesture will reset the culture’s operating system.

The intent reads as tactical deflation. Kippenberger lived in a postwar Europe where art carried the heavy expectation of ethical seriousness and historical repair, then entered an art market that monetized “newness” as branding. His practice thrived in that contradiction: he staged himself as unreliable narrator, borrowing styles, slogans, and cultural junk to show how quickly innovation becomes décor. In that light, the quote isn’t saying art is pointless; it’s saying novelty is a bad yardstick for art’s power.

The subtext is also a critique of artistic messianism. Art doesn’t legislate, doesn’t feed people, doesn’t topple regimes on schedule. What it can do is slower and sneakier: alter sensibilities, embarrass certainty, expose the machinery of taste and money. Kippenberger’s cynicism is a kind of honesty performance, daring the viewer to stop demanding “the new” and start noticing the system that keeps selling it.