Sigmar Polke

Ohne Titel (Hochstand), 1984

(Untitled [Watchtower])

In the 1980s, painting underwent a process of revitalisation largely driven by the momentum of a market that, after its reinvention through neoliberal paradigms, turned its focus anew on proven values. Painting, so often synthesised as the work of art par excellence (just as painters were associated with the integral notion of the artist), once again fared well: such an old medium must be a sure bet. The market in Germany is the only one in Europe that has always guaranteed continuity and potential expansion, driven by a group of international galleries, kunsthalles (art galleries) and kunstmuseums (art museums) in the largest capitals of the länders (states) and by top-tier events such as the Documenta art show in Kassel or the art fair of Cologne. The nearby art fair in Basel served to consolidate this leadership.

At that time in history, Germany timidly began to analyse its traumatic past as the executioner of a cultural model it had completely destroyed, with its bizarre obsession with uniformity of thought and of the lives of millions of people. A cultural tradition of European and pro-Europe nature, with predominantly Jewish roots, had been exterminated. Artists such as Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Blinky Palermo, Joseph Beuys, Hanne Darboven and Sigmar Polke (Oels, Poland, 1941 – Cologne, Germany, 2010), among others, began to use highly diverse attitudes to reflect in their works the void generated by guilt, by pragmatism before the ill-taken decisions of the preceding generation and by the consequent need for integration. The artists did this through the use of their own experiences and perishable materials, based on a proposal of life as an archive or an abstraction; based on humour or irony. In this way, some of them questioned painting itself, which Bernard Marcadé defined as "politics of image" (rather than political painting).

Sigmar Polke was born in Silesia, a region in the southwest of Poland bordering the Czech Republic and Germany. He was born in 1941, when the region was part of the Third Reich after Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. In 1953, his family emigrated to West Berlin and he ended up in Düsseldorf, where he studied at the Kunstakademie fine arts academy between 1961 and 1967 with the professor Joseph Beuys, among others. In 1963, he founded Kapitalistischen Realismus (capitalist realism) along with G. Richter and Konrad Fischer-Lueg. This pop movement questioned both Soviet socialist realism and American pop art, which they considered to be overblown and superficial. The close relationship between Richter and Polke in the 1970s reached its peak at the historic polke/richter dual exhibition in 1966, at gallery h in Hannover. Their careers and lives diverged thereafter, although they clearly defined a period in the history of art. While Richter planned his artistic career as an architect who builds a city, Polke ceaselessly changed course towards constant challenge and new, unknown destinations.

Ohne Titel (Hochstand) is a type of painting in which technique is something like a blender that processes and mixes dissimilar materials, and the canvas is the receptacle that contains them. As in other works from the same period and those that would appear in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the canvas is shown bare, the frame is seen behind it and the fabric takes on a dual levity. On the one hand, it lets observers see what supports it and keeps it taut. On the other, it contains a series of textures that fight to stand out and to hide themselves, like a gesture that cancels its intention. In addition, the fabric in this work has been replaced with bubble wrap, which is normally used to surround and protect the canvas, preparing it for transport and storage. After several decades, this work remains in excellent physical condition as a result of the conservation of the Restoration Department of the IVAM. The surface is extremely fragile, and the watchtower appearing on it was constructed using a combination of stencil technique and brightly coloured paint that resolves the scene with a certain amount of distant drama. Polke seems to be telling us that the past may be used to look at the present and to channel the future.

References

A New Spirit in Painting, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1981.

Polke, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, 1994.

Polke/Richter - Richter/Polke, Christie’s International Media Division, London, 2014.

Á. de los Ángeles, 50 Obras maestras 1950-2000, IVAM, València, 2020, p.78.