Martin Kippenberger in Venice, Italy (1996) © E. Semotan

The Museum of Modern Art houses the world’s most important collection of twentieth-century art. It owns work without which modernism’s tumultuous and often brilliant narrative is inconceivable. As a result, the museum’s influence has, since its inception, been international in scope and has done much to color the way in which modernism has been interpreted. In recent years, MOMA has equivocated curatorially and been upstaged by the flashy vagaries of the commercial art scene, but its clout is undiminished. MOMA’s imprimatur continues to matter.

It is significant, then, that the museum is giving a stamp of approval to the late German artist Martin Kippenberger. Although it was organized by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, “Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective,” a retrospective covering about twenty years, gains crede ...

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