Jonathan Meese
1971– · German painter, sculptor and performance artist
Jonathan Meese (born in Tokyo, around 1970) is a German painter, sculptor and performance artist working mainly in Berlin and Hamburg. His often multimedia work spans painting, collage, drawing and installation, and deals with figures of world history, primordial myths and heroes. The son of a Welsh father and a German mother, he studied at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts from 1995 to 1998 but left without a degree.
His breakthrough came at the 1998 Berlin Biennale, where he showed Ahoi der Angst, a photo-collage dedicated to the Marquis de Sade. Since then he has made space installations and actions, often casting himself as the central figure through self-portraits or disguised personas. His themes stem mainly from National Socialism and from linguistic and theatrical references to German philosophy and literary history.
Among his projects are the backdrop for the film Sonnenallee (1999) and the stage design for Wolfgang Rihm's opera Dionysus at the Salzburg Festival (2010). In 2013 he was tried for performing the Hitler salute in a stage performance and acquitted. His best-selling painting, Agamemnon's Hähnchenbesteck (2003), sold for £132,500 at Christie's London in 2007.