西格馬‧波爾克

多麗絲和查爾斯 ‧薩奇，倫敦
約瑟夫‧E和阿琳‧麥克休，芝加哥和溫哥華
私人收藏

科隆，約瑟夫‧郝布爾茲藝術館，「西格馬‧波爾克」，1984年9－10月，彩色圖版頁94
倫敦，薩奇畫廊，「戈盧布、古斯頓、波爾克」，1988年，彩色圖版頁163 （展覽實景）
三藩市現代藝術博物館；華盛頓特區，赫希洪博物館和雕塑園，史密森學會；芝加哥當代藝術博物館；紐約，布魯克林博物館，「西格馬‧波爾克」，1991年11月 - 1992年1月，品號25，彩色圖版23頁68

（展覽圖錄） 蒂賓根，蒂賓根美術館（巡迴展覽），《西格馬‧波爾克作品選集： 繪畫、布料、物件，1962-1971》，1976年，品號156，圖版頁25
（展覽圖錄）洛杉磯當代藝術博物館（巡迴展覽），《西格馬‧波爾克的PhotoWorks：圖像消失的時刻》，1995年，圖版頁65
（展覽圖錄）波恩，德意志聯邦共和國藝術與展覽館（巡迴展覽），《西格馬‧波爾克：繪畫的三大謊言》，1997-98，彩色圖版頁124
愛德華‧布符－基里伯恩（編輯），《薩奇畫廊的歷史》，倫敦，2011年，圖版無頁碼

This painting is in very good condition. Close inspection under raking light reveals a number of isolated networks of extremely thin hairline cracks in places to the surface, particularly in the upper left quadrant and the top black corners, which are consistent with the artist's choice of media and a work of this date. The canvas has been relined, which has stabilized the surface. Examination under ultraviolet light reveals a small number of extremely minor retouchings to the black corners. The canvas is framed in a blonde wood strip frame.
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Having spent the 1960s defining the parameters of an inimitable brand of Pop Art in West Germany, in the following decade Sigmar Polke turned his attention increasingly towards an ever proliferating diaspora of artistic media. Appearing almost like a still from a reel of film, Polke's major work Portrait of David Lamelas (Obelisk) of 1971 engages the vocabulary of figurative content yet remains highly elusive and determinedly outside of categorization. The brilliant color and confident imagery suggest an immediately recognizable subject within an entirely logical context. However, ultimately this painting mediates a critical path between abstraction and figuration, while also remaining rooted in the pop vernacular of Polke's earlier output. Here this mysterious monolith is framed in a cosmic field of red light and splattered with a connect-the-dots portrait of David Lamelas smoking a cigarette, both in white on the left and mirrored in black on the right, creating a symmetrical effect reminiscent of a Rorschach test. An Argentine sculptor, conceptual artist, photographer and experimental filmmaker, David Lamelas was a pioneer of Conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. Central concerns of his practice include the temporality of creativity, themes of alternative communication and the foundational principles of visual cognition. Polke's portrait of him is similarly multifaceted within a brilliant red field framed by curved black corners that imply the frame of a camera, mirror or indeed the distinctive frame of an early television set.

Sigmar Polke's mercurial oeuvre conjures with and seeks to deconstruct the illusions and paradoxes of painting. Viewed in the context of Polke's inimitable brand of Pop Art and the Kapitalistischer Realismus, this painting questions the very mechanics of the art of painting and is in the highest tier of this brilliant innovator's work. By making transparent the construction of his image, Polke appears not only to acknowledge the historical relevance and parameters of painterly convention, but also sets out to challenge and extend them. Typical of the international wider Pop Art movement to which, by the time of this painting, he was a central protagonist, Portrait of David Lamelas (Obelisk) embodies the rebellious attitude to the act and art of painting and image representation as expounded by the likes of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. Emphasizing formal features of design, pattern and color, Polke, like his Pop Art peers, here questions the status of the finished object and the authorial hand of the artist. The important use of spray paint in the present work became a critical medium for his art, and in a brilliantly concise departure from precedent, is utterly devoid of the painterly artistic gesture that had defined prevailing trends in Art History.

Born in Oels, Silesia, then in East Germany and now in Poland, Polke moved to West Germany in 1953, where he was to win the Young German Art Prize and have his first solo shows in Berlin and Dusseldorf immediately prior to this work in 1966. However, his student career, spanning 1961 to 1967 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, was paramount in shaping his immensely dynamic approach to art. He studied under Karl Otto Götz and Gerhard Höhme, and the pedagogical presence of Joseph Beuys on the faculty was hugely significant. Beuys considered art as the potential facilitator of social and political change, and his actions and performances must have greatly expanded Polke's understanding of what art could achieve. Indeed, even in 1963 and with his friends Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg, Polke initiated the quasi movement Kapitalistischer Realismus that, in its title alone, was a pithy riposte to the state-sponsored 'Socialist Realism' of the GDR. Their first exhibition was entitled Life with Pop - A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism: clearly these young men saw art as a means to effect political and social ends. Moreover, their open letter of 1963 stated that: "Pop Art recognizes the modern mass media as a genuine cultural phenomenon and turns their attributes, formulations and content, through artifice, into art. It thus fundamentally changes the face of modern painting and inaugurates an aesthetic revolution. Pop Art 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." (Gerhard Richter, Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, and Sigmar Polke, "Letter to a newsreel company," April 29, 1963, in: Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Ed., Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London, 1995, p. 16).