BERLIN—The German press seems completely enamored of Jörg Immendorff's new exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie, a far cry from the days when the dailies ran amuck with the scandal of the sixty-year-old artist being caught in a Düsseldorf hotel with seven prostitutes (reportedly, four more were on their way), and large cache of cocaine several years ago.

"He is our ambassador to the world," chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared. The artist is reportedly the chancellor's favorite, reports Deutsche Welle.

Immendorff, who was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1998, studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf under Joseph Beuys. ALS left him unable to paint with his left hand, the Deutsche Welle reports, so he switched to the right. In 2004, he funded a foundation to fund research of the disease.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports Immendorff "succeeded once more in creating a surreal commentary on the state of the nation." Die Welt caught the artist at his fiercest, opining on the current state of German society: "We have four million illiterate. I say polemically: these people should not be allowed to vote."

Die Zeit published a long review highlighting the exhibitions overview of Immendorff's long career, culminating in the Café Deutschland paintings. "It's a crazy convoluted life" the paper reports, "full of turnabouts, explosions and surprises."

Not to be outdone, the general director of Berlin's state museums, Klaus Schuster, writes that Immendorff shows Germans how they really are, in a long tradition ranging from "Durer to the Fuhrer and beyond."


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(German translation by SignandSight)