Joining the dots

Different strokes

‘Mr Polke, why do you always try out new things?’ ‘It’s got something to do with the fact that life goes on.’   One of the most significant artists from post-war Germany, Sigmar Polke passed away in Cologne on June 10 because of cancer; he was 69. 

Polke (pronounced POLL-ka) left an indelible mark on the last four decades of contemporary painting.  He was also a self-taught photographer who ingeniously incorporated photographs into his paintings and sculptures.

An artist whose work defied easy definitions, Polke was recognised as an artist of infinite - often ravishing - pictorial jest. He is particularly remembered for his sarcastic and vibrant layering of found images and maverick painting processes. Hailed for his vivid imagination, Polke was untiring in his experimentation and in creating imagery which continually incited new possibilities of perception.  His images questioned accepted taste, challenged the viewer to think through how they had been made, and more than subtly mocked and commented on historical and political perspectives.

“The longer we look at Sigmar Polke’s work, the more clearly we see before our very eyes its special power of regeneration,” wrote art historian, curator and critic, Bice Curiger (Sigmar Polke/ Music from Unknown Source). “A power that even extends to elements from far back,  to previously unremarked features that then re-emerge under the guise of new ‘finds.’ Polke’s work is replete with moments of covert and overt anticipation.  A complex web of diversity is not only evident within individual pictures but also stretches – retrospectively – between works that might otherwise appear to be temporal and aesthetic poles apart… Unlike other Modernists, Polke does not take art as the starting point of his voyage of discovery: instead he starts from reality and what reality should become.”

Polke did not believe in owing allegiance to any particular mode of representation.  His involvement with a wide range of styles, techniques, materials and themes baffled the viewers across the world. His fascination with the relationship between abstract and figurative art continued uninterruptedly. His art of subverting elitist mythologies of artistic creation, and overthrowing the dominant visual ideologies earned him the reputation of an artful dodger, a trickster who mocked all styles, a sorcerer, jester, sage, and visionary.

Love for dots

Polke became particularly known for routinely using pictures of print media in his drawings, watercolours, and gouaches. “He is a man who takes his morning coffee with a big pile of newspapers and a pair of scissors to hand,” wrote Adrian Searle in The Guardian. “He snips things out, headlines and odd or arresting images, to re-use in his art. Even though his is an art frequently based on secondary material - the newspaper clipping, the found photograph, old engravings, old art, old pornography - his work startles, confuses, fascinates and bedevils anyone who cares, or tries, to pin it down.”
For one who never hesitated to employ cartoons, childish scribbles and references to art history, Polke’s work was often characterised by a number of ‘vibrating, resonating, blurring, and re-emerging’ dots. “I like the way the dots in a magnified picture swim and move about; the way that motifs change from recognisable to unrecognisable - the undecided, ambiguous nature of the situation, the way it remains open."

In another instance, he even made a philosophical submission: "I love all dots. With many dots I am married. I want all dots to be happy. The dots are my brothers. I am also a dot. Earlier we used to play together; today everybody goes their own way. We only meet now and again at family gatherings and ask: how are you?"

Polke’s pioneering spirit led him to many untested terrains. He developed, for instance, an abiding interest in potato, and produced potato-head pictures and potato-rack installations. “If there is anything at all that embodies every aspect of the artist that has ever come under discussion - love of innovation, creativity, spontaneity, creation completely from within oneself etc - it is the potato,” he claimed. He saw in the potato and in its sprouts the most amazing forms, colours and ‘a virtual torrent of creativity’.  

Capitalist realism

Born on February 13, 1941, in Oels, eastern Germany Polke completed a glass-painting apprenticeship in his late teens, and later enrolled in the Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 1963, while he was still a student, he and his fellow students, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg, founded a painting movement they called Kapitalistischen Realismus (Capitalist Realism). It was an anti-style of art, basically opposed to both East German Socialist Realism and to 'Americanisation' of West German culture.

Their first exhibition titled Life with Pop - A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism clearly betrayed a political and social agenda. Their manifesto eulogised that pop art fundamentally changed the face of modern painting and inaugurated an aesthetic revolution. “It has rendered conventional painting - with all its sterility, its isolation, its artificiality, its taboos and its rules - entirely obsolete, and has rapidly achieved international currency and recognition by creating a new view of the world."

Among the works produced during the height of  'Capitalist Realism' years, was Polke’s raster-dot painting titled Strand (Beach / 80 x 150 cm.) showing a beach full of holiday-makers drawn from the German media. 

The deliberate ambiguity of the work mocked both its subject matter and the manner of its representation. When the canvas came up for auction in 2007 at Christie's in London it was sold for 2,708,000 pounds against an estimate of 800,000 – 1,200,000 pounds.
A world-wide celebrity, Polke was notorious in shunning the limelight and strictly guarding his privacy. He was also famous for going for months without answering his phone, opening his mail or allowing visitors into his studio.

Famous for his tall and commanding presence, caustic wit, and notorious behaviour he was an art dealer’s nightmare.  He is said to have managed a modest lifestyle, and was happy to work without an assistant and live in a warehouse in Cologne surrounded by his books and paintings.