Cocaine and call girls led to artist's downfall

By ALAN PERROTT AND AGENCIES



A renowned German artist who cast a hellraising spell over Auckland during the 1980s has confessed to hosting porn and cocaine parties for himself and selected prostitutes.

In a Duesseldorf court this week, Jorg Immendorff, admitted being caught naked with nine prostitutes and 21.6 grams of cocaine in a hotel suite last year.

He claimed he had held 27 similar cocaine, pornography and booze parties over 2 1/2 years which police estimated cost the artist about $80,000.

The 59-year-old, who is suffering from an incurable nervous disorder, is considered one of Germany's best contemporary painters. In December 1987 he became the Auckland Art Gallery's first foreign artist-in-residence.

The former left-wing Maoist activist was commissioned to paint a portrait of his friend, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, last year. The work, yet to be painted, is due to hang alongside the portraits of other post-war chancellors that line the walls of the Berlin Chancellery.

Mr Schroeder's office said it had not been decided whether the artist would retain his commission. While he spent only two months in Auckland, Immendorff was an instant social sensation as the "Mick Jagger of the European art scene".

After the gaudy excesses of the mid-80s, the city's glitterati were dazzled by the genuine bohemian, dripping with Germanic arrogance and cash.

DJ and former club owner Peter Urlich remembered the artist for his grand entrances, deep pockets and his way with the ladies. The flashy artist would sweep into Urlich's Berlin club with a groupie on one arm and an art lover on the other. He would quickly begin luring more women with his broken English.

"He certainly had an acute sense of the erotic," said Mr Urlich. "He'd be sending these $300 bottles of champagne to women around the bar, ask them to join him and then pull his posse of pussy together and go dancing.

"I loved having him here, he was a colourful man - lots of rings, lots of jewellery, lots of silver. So yeah, come on back, all is forgiven."

A highly publicised death threat - a gift-wrapped parcel containing a dead rabbit, a dead bird and two messages - was found outside his studio-flat near Albert Park shortly before Immendorff returned to Germany.

Theories abounded as to whether the threat was genuine, possibly from someone wanting Immendorff to stay away from his girlfriend, or whether the attention-seeking artist had staged it himself.

He left after gifting a large artwork, Readymade de l'histoire, to the Auckland Art Gallery, and having successfully avoided stepping outside the inner city.

One of the finalists in this year's Walters Prize - the country's newest and richest art award - based his work on Immendorff's visit.

The installation by Mike Stevenson features some of the newspaper headlines of the time such as "Threatened painter seeks refuge in nightclubs" and "I hate cheap Champagne".

In a statement read by his lawyer at the opening of the trial in Duesseldorf, Immendorff said: "I admit to everything of which I am accused, but I was playing out my erotic fantasies and it never came to sex."

Last August, police raided a luxury suite in Duesseldorf's Steigenberger hotel where they discovered Immendorff on a bed, naked and surrounded by nine prostitutes.

The cocaine was found in a Versace ashtray on a bedside table and in the artist's workshop nearby. The raid apparently followed a tip-off from a "jilted" prostitute.

Immendorff was charged with possession of cocaine and encouraging his guests to consume the drug.

If convicted he faces a minimum of one year's imprisonment.