Martin Haake

The Return of the Doodle



"Telephone Doodles..."
...is a colloquial term for what the British call their random scribbling, which is so frequently produced absent-mindedly by telephone partners.

Sometimes these telephone doodles are of surprising quality and artistic value.

In his series „The Return of the Doodle“ Martin Haake celebrates this incidental scribbling as a artistic device and creates buoyant, quirky universe full of allusions to pop culture, yellow press and daily soaps.

Martin Haake’s works arise from collections drowsing in the depths of his enormous archive. Haake collects almost everything he can get ahold of, thus his archive comprises yellow press magazines from the fifties, scrapped articles, old school charts and photo novellas. For Haake nothing seems to be too profane to be incorporated into his art. Inspired by movements like Art Brut and Dada, but also by artists like Adolf Wölfli and Nellie Mae Brown Haake’s art has remained very British. He de- and reconstructs Figures, bodies and spaces and rearranges them according to his own will.

Martin Haake was born in Oldenburg in 1964. As a free lancing illustrator he lives in Berlin. Among other prices he has been awarded the ADC Awards Germany, as well as the D&AD in silver. His works have been published in penguin books, Royal Academy of Arts, Queen Elizabeth Hall or in the Boston Globe.