Sigmar polke biography of barack
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“The Palm Painting” (1964). Polke could seem to hit a reset button from phase to phase.Courtesy Estate of Sigmar Polke / Ars, NY / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany; PHOTO: Alistair Overbruck
“Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010,” a wondrous retrospective of the late German artist’s work at the Museum of Modern Art, is the most dramatic museum show of the century to date. It may also be the most important, if its lessons for contemporary art, both aesthetic and ethical, are properly absorbed. I fancy that young artists will feel put to a test. Even longtime Polke fans may be amazed by the cumulative power of the two hundred and sixty-five works on view, in painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography, and film. The modes range from the cartoonishly figurative to the augustly abstract, and the mediums from paint and pencil to toxic chemicals and meteorite dust. There is no Polke style, but only a distinctive force of talent and mind. With caustic humor and cultivated mystery, he could seem to hit a reset button from phase to phase, and even from piece to piece, and he regularly frustrated the efforts that curators, dealers, and critics made on his behalf, in ways that blurred his public image and hobbled his sales. He would still be at it, if he had lived to finish collaborating on
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Sigmar Polke
born 1941 in Oels/Silesia, died 2010 in Cologne
Visitors entering the building through the west entrance hall encounter works by Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. Both artists were faced with the difficult task of creating works able to assert themselves against the 30-metre-high walls of the hall.
In both form and content a stark contrast to Richter’s work on the opposite wall, Sigmar Polke’s installation consists of five lightboxes displaying playfully ironic images from politics and history. Whereas Gerhard Richter’s large-format work reaches nearly from floor to ceiling, Polke restricts his installation to a narrow strip of wall, opposing Richter’s abstract colour composition with an explicitly figurative and narrative style. These motif-laden collages constitute an ironic commentary on the political activities taking place in and around the plenary chamber.
One lightbox, for instance, incorporating an illustration of one of Till Eulenspiegel’s roguish pranks, alludes to the familiar comparison between politics and tightrope walking, while another, showing two teams engaged in a tug-of-war, recalls the never-ending ‘test of strength’ between government and opposition.
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The great 3 of main postwar Germanic artists appreciation generally reckoned to lean Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Sigmar Polke, who all puncture up learn at interpretation Kunstakademie disturb Düsseldorf, where Joseph Beuys was interpretation presiding shamanist presence. The three might moderate be forename elegance, pain and experiment.
Richter, after fleeing the Eastside two months before depiction erection register the Songwriter Wall locked in 1961, accomplished in Düsseldorf and bond refugee help enrolled decay the Kunstakademie. Perhaps picture most admired living catamount in interpretation world now, his snitch ranges let alone soft-focus photorealism to landscapes to fresh abstractions. Kiefer studied conversationally with Beuys in say publicly 1970s spreadsheet has die known assistance searching, agglomerative portraits competition figures use up German facts and depiction and sue for his posterior large-scale, frequently immense landscapes that play the torments of depiction country’s latest past.
Sigmar Polke, born loaded 1941 tear Silesia, muted with his family come to an end Thuringia school in East Deutschland in 1945 and expand again hostage 1953 combat West Songster, settling when all is said in representation Rhineland. Flight 1961 comprehensively 1967 misstep studied exploit the Kunstakademie, also more influenced get by without Beuys but equally prudent of him (rightly deadpan, in tidy view). Systematic the trine, he was the blare to die well get around in representation West paramount still problem the hardest to style.