“Real comedy can only come from a serious source: reality.” Loriot

This book commemorates the life and work of Vicco von Bülow, who was second to none in bringing intelligent, sensitive, minimalist humor into German living rooms. Besides his oeuvre of drawings and paintings—including some previously unpublished miniatures parodying famous masterpieces of visual art—his works for television and film take us through “Loriot’s universe,” in which he traces the pitfalls, absurdities, and inhibitions of human coexistence astutely and forbearingly.

Prominent contemporaries and friends of Loriot pay tribute to him, describing him as a homo universalis whose genius and esprit had a formidable influence on everyday cultural life inGermany for almost half a century, causing him to be inscribed on the collective German memory like no other. A new, supplemental CD contains selected sketches and texts about the medium in which von Bülow became so popular—television—as well as newly recorded interpretations of the poems Kinderlied and Wunderbar.

The artist:

Vicco von Bülow, alias Loriot (*1923 in Brandenburg as Bernhard Victor Christoph Carl von Bülow) was born into a Prussian officer’s family. He studied at the Kunstakademie Hamburg from 1947 to 1949. In 1950 he began working as a freelance caricaturist under the pseudonym of Loriot—the French word for “oriole,” which is the animal on the von Bülow coat of arms. From 1967 to 1972 he had a television series called Cartoon. He also designed WUM, a TV dog, for the charity AKTION SORGENKIND. His television series Loriot ran from 1976 to 1978. In the late nineteen-seventies he began working more intensively as a director in television and film. His films include 1987’s Ödipussi and 1990’s Pappa ante Portas. He is the recipient of many prizes and distinguished awards, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, or the Grosse Bundesverdienstkreuz.

CD playing time 53:43

Exhibition schedule: Loriot. Die Hommage: Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin, November 6, 2008–March 29, 2009 · Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, April 24–August 23, 2009 · Haus der Geschichte, Bonn, September 18, 2009–February 28, 2010