Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection

Author: Mark Coetzee and Laura Steward Heon

Genre: Contemporary Art History/Exhibitions

Painting is dead. So is hip-hop. There are a lot of people and things that are dead, some other things that should die (like Crocs, although they may be comfortable those definitely are not bio-degradable). Of those many things neither painting or hip hop are dead because I have experienced both and find them to be thriving in the most unlikely of places quite well.

In Life After Death, a group of essays commemorates the revival of painting that occurred by a group of young German painters during the decade after 1989—immediately following the fall of the Berlin wall. These men were the “Renaissance men” of our time and Steward and Coetzee take a look through the Rubell collection to examine the remarkable feat that these artists have created in times that are often looked at as less than alive. So the next time you see a clever ironic t-shirt that unknowingly claims “Hip Hop is Dead” politely tell them, “So is painting”.

Steph