Michel Majerus

The Luxembourgian painter and sculptor Michel Majerus (1967-2002) was best known for paintings and installations in large formats for which he combined motifs from the history of art with the symbolism of mass culture. After graduating from the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, he moved to Berlin, where, with the exception of a oneyear residence in Los Angeles in 2001, he lived and worked until his early death. In its expert sampling of images and words from diverse contexts in everyday life, Majerus’s art shows the influence of Pop art. His work features characters from popular computer games such as Super Mario, a portrait of the rock star Marilyn Manson, defamiliarized logos of major corporations, but also expressive brushstrokes that recall the painting of Willem de Kooning. On April 24, 1998, Majerus created a series of eighty drawings in sepia ink on paper. Choosing a technique that is rare in his oeuvre, he staged the recourse to a classic medium as a quotation to be handled with ironic detachment. The works on paper–the complete set of original drawings–act as an encyclopedic index of the visual vocabulary that is characteristic of Michel Majerus’s entire oeuvre. In this book, the previously unpublished Printer’s Proof series is accompanied by extensive essays by Christian Rattemeyer and Lucien Kayser.