The Quiet Album
Dimensions: 148 x 400 cm. (58.3 x 157.5 in.)
The Quiet Album is a 1990 work by Albert Oehlen, Mayo Thompson, and Werner Büttner.
In 1995 German radio program Popalphabet listed The Quiet Album with the rest of The Red Crayola's discography[1]. Later that year American fanzine Puncture wrote that it was "described by Thompson as a picture of the band [...] printed onto parachute silk. There was no album per se."[2]
The Story So Far, the band's 2004 biography explains that the album "comprised a banner showing a black and white reproduction of a photograph of [the group] life-size, singing with their faces pressed against the closed windows of Oehlen’s Porsche Targa parked in the snow in Hamburg. It was a limited edition, came in a white box modeled on The Beatles 'White Album,' and sold out immediately."[3]
On October 30, 2021 a banner matching the description above auctioned for €2,400.[4] The seller was apparently able only to decipher Oehlen's signature, and was likely unaware it was an "album."
Interpretations
- According to his biography on AskArt.com, "Oehlen's Porsche [...] was permanently parked outside his studio because he never learned how to drive."[5]
- In 1982 Martin Kippenberger and Oehlen created "Capri bei Nacht" ("Capri at Night"), one of a series of Kippenberger works based on the Ford model[6]. It was a brown Ford Capri painted with a mixture of brown paint and oat flakes, with a bumper sticker that read "Kenner trinken Württemberger" ("Connoisseurs drink Württembergers"). According to The Art Story, the coating parodied Joseph Beuys' "Braunkreuz" ("brown cross") paintings that were done in a specific shade of brown, as well as Anselm Kiefer's paintings that incorporate tactile materials like straw and flowers.[7]
- "The Quiet Album" is a pun on The Beatles' "White Album". In the early 2000s Oehlen released two albums with his brother Markus under the name Van Oehlen—a pun on Van Halen.
Image gallery
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Edition 14 of 40. Signatures on the lid of the original white box
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Albert Oehlen print dated 1989 with the same photo
- ↑ http://www.le-musterkoffer.de/alpha/thompson06.html
- ↑ Puncture no. 33, summer 1995
- ↑ The Story So Far of The Red Crayola & The Red Krayola (2004)
- ↑ https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/114445597_oehlen-albert-porsche-911-targa-f-modell-als
- ↑ https://www.askart.com/auction_records/Albert_Oehlen/108951/Albert_Oehlen.aspx
- ↑ https://archive.nytimes.com/wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/the-ford-capri-as-an-artists-muse/
- ↑ https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kippenberger-martin/