Prima i piedi (Feet first) by German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997)

Arts, Briefly – Crucified-Frog Sculpture Troubles the Pope – Brief – NYTimes.com: “Pope Benedict XVI has condemned a sculpture of a crucified frog on display at a museum in Bolzano, Italy, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. Franz Pahl, an official from the Trentino-Alto Adige region in northern Italy, said the pope had written to him to complain about the frog, which was installed in May at Museion, the modern-art museum in Bolzano.”

Members of the provincial government, who form a majority on the museum’s board, said they would ask for the work to be taken down when they meet with museum officials on Thursday

(Via New York Times.)

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Italian Official Begins Hunger Strike Over Artwork – ARTINFO.com: “Last week, Franz Pahl, an elected official in the country’s South Tyrol region, began a hunger strike protesting a Martin Kippenberger artwork that depicts a crucified frog holding a mug of beer in one hand and an egg in the other, reports Der Standard.

Pahl has said that he’ll continue the strike until the work, on view in the new, state-funded Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bozen, is removed. Curator Letizia Regaglia has thus far refused to do so. The work is scheduled to be on display until September 21.

Pahl, who’s been camping out in front of the museum overnight, says it’s ’schizophrenic’ to invite the Pope to visit the region while displaying such a ‘perversion of the Christian cross’ in a state-funded museum. The pope is spending his summer in nearby Bressanone.”

(Via Artinfo.)

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Kippenberg was a painter, sculptor and photographer. Several exhibitions
of his work have been held posthumously including a show at London’s Tate Modern in 2006.