Sigmar Polke

Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art explores the ways in which artists have sought to explain their world in terms of an alternate reality, drawn from imagination, the subconscious, poetry, nature, myth, and religion. Endless Enigma takes as its point of departure Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s legendary 1936 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, which not only introduced these movements to the American public, but also placed them in a historical and cultural context by situating them with artists from earlier centuries. Presenting works from the twelfth century to the present day, this catalogue is organized into six themes—Monsters & Demons, Dreams & Temptation, Fragmented Body, Unconscious Gesture, Super Nature, and Sense of Place. Works included range from medieval gargoyles to twentieth-century works by Louise Bourgeois, Sigmar Polke, and Pablo Picasso as well as contemporary works by Michaël Borremans, Marcel Dzama, and Raymond Pettibon. Masterworks from the likes of Piero di Cosimo, Francisco de Goya, and Titian are considered alongside those by William Blake and Odilon Redon. Time folds and temporal barriers collapse when Damiano Cappelli meets Edvard Munch, and Salvator Rosa encounters Luc Tuymans and Lisa Yuskavage. Salvador Dalí, Sherrie Levine, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Kerry James Marshall—eight centuries intersect and, as such, this wide-ranging catalogue examines affinities in intention and imagery between works executed across a broad span of time. Organized in collaboration with Nicholas Hall, a specialist in the field of Old Masters and nineteenth-century art, this fully illustrated catalogue is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2018. It includes new scholarship by Dawn Ades, Olivier Berggruen, and J. Patrice Marandel.

An illustrated exploration of Girlfriends (1965/66), one of Sigmar Polke's important early paintings. The artist Sigmar Polke (1941–2010) worked across a broad range of media—including photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and film—and in styles that varied from abstract expressionism to Pop. This volume in Afterall's One Work series offers an illustrated exploration of Freundinnen (Girlfriends 1965/66), one of Polke's important early paintings. Taken from a found image of two young women, and using the raster dots also found in mass media reproductions, Girlfriends offers a statement about the use and social function of images. Stefan Gronert approaches Girlfriends through its deliberate and elusive ambiguity, providing technical detail and historical background that allow some of the work's motivation and depth to become clearer. Gronert analyzes Polke's relationship to his tutors and peers, especially Gerhard Richter; describes the art historical context in which Polke worked; and discusses some of the social and political issues to which Girlfriends refers. Considering such topics as the distinction between Polke and Alain Jacquet in their use of photographed material, between Polke's use of the raster technique and that of Roy Lichtenstein, and the feminist discourse of the time, Gronert draws on a variety of critical interpretations of Polke's work, including some material that has not yet been translated into English.

Sigmar Polke's thirty-five-year career, during which he has produced a vast range of work in all mediums, has earned him a reputation as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Born in 1941, he began his creative output around 1963 in Dusseldorf during a time of enormous social, cultural, and artistic changes in Germany and elsewhere. Few of his works demonstrate more vividly his imagination, sardonic wit, and subversive approach than the drawings, watercolors, and gouaches produced during the 1960s and early 1970s. Embedded in these images are incisive and parodic commentaries on consumer society, the postwar political scene in Germany, and classic artistic conventions.

Catalog of an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art, Nov. 15, 2002-Apr. 6, 2003 and at the Tate Modern, London, Oct. 2, 2003-Jan. 4, 2004.

Sigmar Polke is a highly exemplary Postmodernist and perhaps one the most indicative of a truly European avant-garde culture. This book presents a number of critiques which shed light on Polke’s otherwise bewildering display of stylistic references, apparent changes of allegiance and often unorthodox techniques of production.

This publication is the most complete monograph on Sigmar Polke to date, and includes a number of works never before published.

Tentoonstellingscatalogus. Tekst in het Nederlands, Engels, Duits.Met biografie en bibliografie.