In 1979, Kippenberger gave Würthle his series of around 70 paintings ‘Uni di voi, un tedesco in Firenze’ [One of You, A German in Florence] (1976–77). The small-format canvases, which show snapshot-like views of Florence, are painted in gray, black, and white. Würthle returned the favor by giving the artist free meals for life (for himself and a plus-one). Kippenberger’s pictures of Florence hung in the restaurant for a long time, later landing in the collection of German collector Friedrich Christian ‘Mick’ Flick.

‘Then as now, the art in Paris Bar never seems foreign, but always, or almost always, as part of a lived whole,’ said Bruno Brunnet, co-owner of Contemporary Fine Arts gallery. Walls and corners are covered with paintings, drawings, photographs, installations, and sculptures. Würthle never wanted the place to be understood as an art exhibition: ‘You don’t want to make the guest happy with the pictures, but rather yourself,’ he said. Some artworks are on permanent loan, others purchased by Würthle, still others were gifted to him. The salon hang is sometimes rearranged; guests are always surrounded by recent (sometimes very recent) art history.

On the wall – among many other artworks – is a spring-mounted forearm sculpture by Sarah Lucas; Juergen Teller’s giant Yves Saint Laurent portrait; a grim-looking self-portrait by Dash Snow; a Larry Clark print; Truman Capote painted by Peter Doig; and one of Valie Export’s famed ‘Action Pants: Genital Panic’ posters from 1969. There’s a large-scale Daniel Richter painting, which reimagines the famous Kippenberger canvas Paris Bar (1991) that once hung in the same place. Some pieces are even installed on the ceiling, including Cosima von Bonin’s red-and-white rocket with ‘Miss Riley’ lettering. The list is endless.

Art here is never just decoration, but a core part of the atmosphere, which always includes provocation. For a while, people ate steak frites under the dead eyes of Damien Hirst’s pickled half-rotten cow skull. The fact that some of the works are extremely valuable is part of the concept. ‘I love some of the pictures,’ Würthle said in the early 1980s. ‘My dream would be if there were hidden treasures hanging there, uninsured, just hanging on a nail ... like pearls before the swine, with me as the main sow.’ To a certain degree, this thought experiment later became reality. In 2009, Kippenberger’s Paris Bar, which had graced the rear wall on the right side of the restaurant for more than a decade, fetched a whopping GBP 2.3 million at a Christie’s auction. Word on the street is that now, after Würthle’s passing, Paris Bar will carry on, but how this will look in practice, without its eccentric host, remains to be seen.

When the painter Xenia Hausner came to Berlin in the 1980s, the place was a microcosm of West Berlin: ‘Life in the city gathered there,’ she says. Even if reunified Berlin is a different city, Hausner still goes to the Paris Bar. She was always fascinated by the curved sign on the facade. When she found out it had a twin, she borrowed it to memorialize in a painting. In her Paris Bar (2002), two figures meet for a canapé under the red and green neon light. They appear strangely absorbed, as if in a dream sequence in the middle of a Berlin drama, long after midnight. A familiar scene to many; may the dream never end.

The 19th Gallery Weekend Berlin takes place from April 28 to 30, 2023.

Kito Nedo is a journalist and art critic for Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frieze magazine. He lives in Berlin and Basel.

Published on April 28, 2023.

Captions for full-bleed images: All photographs by Alex de Brabant for Art Basel.