Cosima von Bonin - Dandy Doc (The Apprentice # 5)
Cosima von Bonin
Dandy Doc (The Apprentice # 5)
2009
Wool, cotton and fleece on canvas. 204 x 152 cm. Signed, dated and titled 'Cosima Bonin 2009' verso on canvas.
“The Daffy Formula”: To be a Daffy, a character must first and foremost be like Daffy. Not only must they be congenitally selfish, devious, grandiose, and craven, but all of these characteristics must be magnified to grotesque proportions due to the pointed cruelty of the universe.” Katharina Dom (ed.), Cosima von Bonin, Feelings, exhib.cat., Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Cologne 2024, p.154.
Cologne-resident artist Cosima von Bonin, labelled the “uncrowned Cartoon Queen” by the author and film critic Daniel Kothenschulte, has addressed the estrangement of the everyday for many years. So doing, she strikes an equally playful and precise balancing act between seemingly opposing worlds: her works offer references from popular culture, fashion, film and theatre – from Britney Spears to René Pollesch. Comic and cartoon figures serve as recurring conveyors of meaning.
One key figure is the lisping Daffy Duck from Looney-Tunes, an eccentric antihero, whose consistent failure turns into productive repetition, thus embodying the principle of “joyful failure”.
The textile works ‘Dandy Doc (The Apprentice #5)’ (2009) and ‘Doc Daffy’ (2025), offered here for sale, engage with the cartoon figure in different ways and exemplify Bonin’s characteristic textile series which has been part of the artist’s central work complex since the 2000s. In the work ‘Dandy Doc’, presented at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2010, among other venues, Daffy Duck is clearly identifiable even from a distance despite his simplified contours. In an iconically exaggerated pose, with raised shoulders, clenched fists and pushing back on his heels, the white figure appears embedded in distinctly separate fabric segments.
‘Doc Daffy’, on the other hand, stages the black drake as half-figure against a deep black, velvety ground. The pictorial space functions not as a stage but as an absorbing area: bill, eyes and neck rings stand out almost in relief with the strong contrast of colour, while the rest of the plumage virtually merges with the background. In doing so, the relationship between figure and ground is deliberately set against the tradition of portraiture. Instead of highlighting the figure through contrast, the chromatic convergence leads to a partial dissolution into the background.
Bonin’s textile ‘Panels’ - once self-deprecatingly referred to as ‘rags’ - are often created from various fabrics with different patterns, sewn together and shaped by haute couture seamstresses, and finally stretched onto frames. The artist views her practice as a collective process and, under the motto “we are many”, subverts the traditional ideal of singular authorship.
The word ‘Doc’ in both titles—an informal term of address in American English meaning ‘buddy’—evokes the famous greeting used by Daffy Duck’s rival, Bugs Bunny: “What’s up, doc?”. In addition, the title can be read as an allusion to the classic Looney Tunes cartoon ‘Daffy Doc’ (1938) by Bob Clampett: ‘Doc’ as slang for ‘Doctor’ and ‘Daffy’ as ‘crazy’ together mean ‘the crazy doctor’, underscoring the humorous, ironic dimension of Bonin’s appropriation of the character.
Bonin himself describes Daffy—who oscillates between megalomania and failure—as a role model: “(…) I would love to be like Daffy. The first Daffy story that caught my attention: Daffy and Bugs Bunny are in a crevice, and Daffy Duck keeps shoving him further in, shouting, ‘It’s mine, it’s all mine!’”
Cosima von Bonin, quoted in Daniel Kothenschulte, ‘Adlerauge und Adlerohrin‘, in: Monopol Magazine. No. 5, 2023, pp. 58–73, p. 69.
Provenance
Directly from the artist; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
Exhibitions
Vienna 2014/2015 (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), Cosima von Bonin, Hippies use side door, the year 2014 has lost the plot, exhib.cat., p.135 not illus., p.164 with installation view
Bregenz 2010 (Kunsthaus), Cosima von Bonin, The Fatigue Empire, Das Internationale Wollsekretariat 1989 – 2010, exhib.cat.no.563, p.282 with col.illus.
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Cosima von Bonin
Dandy Doc (The Apprentice # 5)
2009
Wool, cotton and fleece on canvas. 204 x 152 cm. Signed, dated and titled 'Cosima Bonin 2009' verso on canvas.
“The Daffy Formula”: To be a Daffy, a character must first and foremost be like Daffy. Not only must they be congenitally selfish, devious, grandiose, and craven, but all of these characteristics must be magnified to grotesque proportions due to the pointed cruelty of the universe.” Katharina Dom (ed.), Cosima von Bonin, Feelings, exhib.cat., Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Cologne 2024, p.154.
Cologne-resident artist Cosima von Bonin, labelled the “uncrowned Cartoon Queen” by the author and film critic Daniel Kothenschulte, has addressed the estrangement of the everyday for many years. So doing, she strikes an equally playful and precise balancing act between seemingly opposing worlds: her works offer references from popular culture, fashion, film and theatre – from Britney Spears to René Pollesch. Comic and cartoon figures serve as recurring conveyors of meaning.
One key figure is the lisping Daffy Duck from Looney-Tunes, an eccentric antihero, whose consistent failure turns into productive repetition, thus embodying the principle of “joyful failure”.
The textile works ‘Dandy Doc (The Apprentice #5)’ (2009) and ‘Doc Daffy’ (2025), offered here for sale, engage with the cartoon figure in different ways and exemplify Bonin’s characteristic textile series which has been part of the artist’s central work complex since the 2000s. In the work ‘Dandy Doc’, presented at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2010, among other venues, Daffy Duck is clearly identifiable even from a distance despite his simplified contours. In an iconically exaggerated pose, with raised shoulders, clenched fists and pushing back on his heels, the white figure appears embedded in distinctly separate fabric segments.
‘Doc Daffy’, on the other hand, stages the black drake as half-figure against a deep black, velvety ground. The pictorial space functions not as a stage but as an absorbing area: bill, eyes and neck rings stand out almost in relief with the strong contrast of colour, while the rest of the plumage virtually merges with the background. In doing so, the relationship between figure and ground is deliberately set against the tradition of portraiture. Instead of highlighting the figure through contrast, the chromatic convergence leads to a partial dissolution into the background.
Bonin’s textile ‘Panels’ - once self-deprecatingly referred to as ‘rags’ - are often created from various fabrics with different patterns, sewn together and shaped by haute couture seamstresses, and finally stretched onto frames. The artist views her practice as a collective process and, under the motto “we are many”, subverts the traditional ideal of singular authorship.
The word ‘Doc’ in both titles—an informal term of address in American English meaning ‘buddy’—evokes the famous greeting used by Daffy Duck’s rival, Bugs Bunny: “What’s up, doc?”. In addition, the title can be read as an allusion to the classic Looney Tunes cartoon ‘Daffy Doc’ (1938) by Bob Clampett: ‘Doc’ as slang for ‘Doctor’ and ‘Daffy’ as ‘crazy’ together mean ‘the crazy doctor’, underscoring the humorous, ironic dimension of Bonin’s appropriation of the character.
Bonin himself describes Daffy—who oscillates between megalomania and failure—as a role model: “(…) I would love to be like Daffy. The first Daffy story that caught my attention: Daffy and Bugs Bunny are in a crevice, and Daffy Duck keeps shoving him further in, shouting, ‘It’s mine, it’s all mine!’”
Cosima von Bonin, quoted in Daniel Kothenschulte, ‘Adlerauge und Adlerohrin‘, in: Monopol Magazine. No. 5, 2023, pp. 58–73, p. 69.
Provenance
Directly from the artist; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
Exhibitions
Vienna 2014/2015 (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), Cosima von Bonin, Hippies use side door, the year 2014 has lost the plot, exhib.cat., p.135 not illus., p.164 with installation view
Bregenz 2010 (Kunsthaus), Cosima von Bonin, The Fatigue Empire, Das Internationale Wollsekretariat 1989 – 2010, exhib.cat.no.563, p.282 with col.illus.
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Estimate
Time, Location
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