Visual Arts in Germany: Exhibitions and Artist Portraits

Dürer Hase (i.e., Dürer's Hare, 1970)

Dürer's Hare

At the end of the 1960s Polke repeatedly painted pictures that take up previous art works. His treatment of Dürer's famous hare is particularly brash and uninhibited. This hare has been looked upon as the quintessence of German art, the highly realistic drawing of its pelt being regarded as an expression of the perfect workmanship of the representation. Polke takes possession of the hare several times in his work and copies the picture in his own way, including Dürer's distinctive signature. With a few swift strokes he sets the hare on a printed fabric amidst a lower middle-class ambience. Or he very crudely places a rubber band round its contours, which he fixes on the canvass. He trivialises his motif and gives it an ironically broken and comical note. Do as you please. Playing with the breaking of tradition pleases Polke. Like his pictures Höhere Wesen befahlen, obere rechte Ecke schwarz malen or Moderne Kunst, his Dürer Hase is an expression of the liberties that the painter takes and for which he is well-known. Confidently he plays with the limits of the permissible and scores thereby a great success.

Tischerücken (i.e., Moving Tables, 1981)

Tischerücken

The title alludes to the dubious spiritualist practice whereby a table is made to hover and messages from the Beyond may then be received. Polke suggests an analogy between spiritualist practices and art.

Tischerücken is one of Polke's first poured pictures, in which the artist concedes accident a decisive part in his working process. Only through swaying the laid out surface, through moving the table on which it lies, does the picture emerge and receive the message of the painter, which is completely open to the interpretation of the viewer.

Polke reinforces the idea of the table by using simple, printed department store fabric in the place of a canvass and furthermore lets its protrude over the edges of the picture frame, like a table cloth. The drawing of lines on the surface can be read as a sketch adumbrating the work process. The form of the table is set aslant, the rolling lines suggest the flow of colour, and the perpendicular line can be seen as an indication of the result, an abstract panel. The painter constructs a mystery in the abstract dimension and at the same time exposes the method of secretiveness. There is nothing behind it but the artist himself.

Triptychon (i.e., Triptych, 1996)

Triptychon 1

Triptychon 2

Triptychon 3

The three-part work belongs to a series of poured and synthetic resin pictures. The three panels together form a unity. With a breadth of 8 ½ metres and a height of nearly 3 metres this monumental work is one of the biggest pictures in Polke's œuvre. It is today in possession of the Frieder Burda Collection.

The picture consists of several layers of synthetic resin and lacquer that run flowingly over and through each other and have hardened. Poured over a polyester fabric, the stretcher frame behind the picture shows through the picture's surface and so reinforces the interpretation that it represents a motif of crucifixion.

The tripartite form suggests a religious reading. The title further underscores this. But it is a purely abstract picture. Through the form and title, the viewer alone reads the sacral meaning into the work.

Go to: "Sigmar Polke: Painting as a Game without Limits"