Sigmar Polke

Galerie Eberhard Klein, Cologne
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although fails to convey the iridescent quality of the paint. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals some minor wear to the bottom right corner and two minute fly spots towards the centre of the right edge. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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Sigmar Polke’s work has consistently defied interpretation whilst challenging preconceived aesthetic notions, occupying an utterly unique and proudly individual position within the history of late Twentieth Century art. A work of quiet strength and powerful expression, Untitled dates from the latter part of Polke’s career, displaying the artist’s magisterial assurance of technique and method during this period to brilliant effect. Painted in 1999, Untitled sees Polke returning to a visual language he had first employed to powerful effect in the 1960s, arguably in the manner of Andy Warhol’s amalgamation and re-creation of his own earlier masterpieces within the somewhat ironical Big Retrospective Paintings created at a later stage of his career. Enigmatic and curiously poignant in equal measure, Untitled evokes a strong sensation of nostalgia within the viewer through the monochromatic colour palette, reminiscent of books or newspapers from the 1950s and 1960s, and the seemingly quotidian nature of the scene depicted. Polke kept an extensive archive of newspaper cuttings from previous decades from which he drew creative inspiration on occasion, and Untitled appears to be a detail taken from an advertisement or editorial included in a German publication of Polke’s student days. Yet there is an element of mystery inherent within the subject of Untitled: Polke allows us only a glimpse of the figure seated within an interior, robbing the man of any distinguishing features through the abrupt truncation of the composition provided by the canvas edge. A bottle and a glass are placed on a table nearby beneath a mirror and a curtain, although the lack of any other signs of humanity and the presence of only a single glass hints at solitude.  There is a feeling of timelessness to the image, which appears to be totally devoid of modern day appliances or indications of technology: Polke encourages the viewer to place their own construction on Untitled, ensuring that each onlooker’s experience of the work is an entirely personal one.

The dramatic black and white tones of the base image are invigorated by iridescent washes of colour through Polke’s use of the Raster dot, a significant recurring motif within his paintings which paralleled Roy Lichtenstein’s appropriation of the Benday dot in his own works. Rippling pinks and blues seem to dance across the surface of the canvas, alternating hues chasing each other as the spectator moves around the composition. Jutta Nestegard has stated with regard to Polke’s appropriation of the dot that: “The Benday dots are significant as individual points but are also a fixed part of a larger contextual system that means something in itself….There is a movement back and forth between some important, greater meaning and a physically specific existence” (Jutta Nestegard, ‘Apparizione in the North’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Sigmar Polke, Alchimist, 2001, p. 11). The dots seem to act as a screen in front of the image, imprisoning the figure and his surroundings behind an unbreakable wall of colour. Elevating a commonplace printing technique to a higher level of artistic practice through exquisite painterly control, Polke teasingly stretches the possibilities of oil on canvas to suggest another medium entirely, combining elements of high and low culture with impressive dexterity. The result is a work of multifaceted intricacy and stunning complexity, in which an apparently ordinary image has been raised to a level of sublime invention through Polke’s astounding imagination and creative prowess.