In this project, Jonathan Monk refers to the publication OLD VIENNA POSTERS by Martin Kippenberger, published by the Grazer Kunstverein in 1992. Kippenberger’s book is composed of a poster board divided into A4 pages, originally on view in Graz, which in turn depicts the space of a Viennese bar with advertising posters.

For the artists’ book OLD BERLIN POSTERS Monk uses his own collection of German movie posters as a direct reference to Kippenberger’s series Dear Painter, Paint Me (1981). For the series, Kippenberger had had photographs painted by a then unknown movie poster painter named Werner. Monk took this as an opportunity to visit a movie poster gallery in Berlin and collect all the movie posters from the period 1979-1981 that were available there at that moment. These 18 posters purchased by Monk could in turn also have been painted by Werner for Berlin cinemas, and are thus indirectly connected to Kippenberger’s project.