Sigmar Polke was born
in 1941 in Silesia, then part of East Germany and now present-day
Poland. At the age of twelve his family left the Socialist East
and moved to Düsseldorf, in the Rhineland, where he grew
up in the increasingly affluent society of former West Germany.
He studied art at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf
from 1961 to 1967. In 1963 Polke organised an exhibition with
fellow students Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg (later Konrad
Fischer) called Capitalist Realism. The exhibition
was mockingly titled after the realist style of art known as
‘Socialist Realism’, then the official art doctrine
of the Soviet Union, but it also commented upon the consumer-driven
art ‘doctrine’ of western capitalism.
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The artist
Printing Mistakes
Gun Culture
Global Imagery
Machine Paintings
Vision and Surveillance
Abstraction and Figuration
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Sigmar Polke © Franziska Adriani, c/o
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Photo: Franziska Adriani |
Polke’s early work has often been characterised
as European Pop art for its depiction of everyday subject matter
- sausages, bread and potatoes - combined with images from the mass
media. But in contrast to the slick and polished style of American
Pop, Polke’s early drawings have a childlike clumsiness which
implies an ironic attitude both to the culture of commodity worship
and the issue of ‘appropriate’ subject matter for art.
Parallels with mainstream Pop art are also visible in Polke’s
paintings which imitate the dotted effect of commercial printing
techniques. In Girlfriends (1965), Polke challenges the
authority of the printed image by exaggerating the mishaps and unreliability
of the mechanical process: colours are ‘off-register’
and the dots blur together into abstract, meaningless patterns.
During this period Polke also began to use commercially-produced
fabrics instead of canvas, incorporating the printed patterns into
the composition of the painting. By combining these different styles
and techniques, Polke unpicks and exposes the codes and structures
of image-making, asking the viewer to question traditional methods
of evaluating art.
In the 1970s Polke explored the relationship between
photography and painting, and developed his interest in challenging
the objectivity of the photographic image. In 1974 he travelled
in Pakistan and Afghanistan, using his photographs from this trip
as the basis for a number of manipulated photographic and painted
works. These explore questions of authenticity, reproduction, imitation
and authorship, harking back to his ironic statements in the early
1960s that he was guided by ‘Higher Powers’ to produce
paintings.
Polke also began to make large, gestural paintings which combined
figurative and abstract imagery. During the 1980s he experimented
with materials and chemicals, mixing together traditional pigments
with solvents, varnishes, toxins and resins to produce spontaneous
chemical reactions. These experiments produced elaborate abstract
paintings which reflect on the concepts of originality and authorship
which underpin the Modernist tradition and, in particular, the mystique
of American Abstract Expressionism.
In the last two decades Polke has made a number of
works which have been described as ‘allegorical history paintings.’
These groups of works often respond to the site in which they are
shown, weaving together local references with broader reflections
on politics, culture and image-making. The Hunting Tower
series of 1984-88 features a recurring image of the typical observation
points once placed in concentration camps or along the Berlin wall.
Typical of Polke’s complex layering of ideas, these works
reflect on both Germany history and the process of looking, perceiving
and observing which is at the heart of image-making. In recent years
Polke has continued to experiment with new styles and techniques,
creating richly allusive works which reinvent the practice of painting. |
