Sigmar Polke

Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner

“His alterations and manipulations so beautifully interfere with the negatives that the viewer becomes nearly as entranced and seduced by the hallucinogenic properties of the opium as were both the photographer and his subjects.” (Paul Schimmel in Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, Sigmar Polke Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish, 2002, p. 72)

Fondly known as “the alchemist”, Sigmar Polke’s constant mixing of mediums, styles and images in his work has always evaded any direct categorisation. The consummate Post-Modern oeuvre, Polke’s never-ending curiosity about the nature of images has meant that photographs have played a fundamental role in his experiments. For Sigmar Polke the process of photography represents the magical and the accidental in art, drawing shadows from the real world and transforming them by an apothecary of volatile chemical solutions.

Initially it was the descriptive capacity of photographs that fascinated Polke, learning the art of developing by trial and error in a makeshift darkroom. Once he had discovered the limitations of the medium, as well as the spontaneous accidents and anomalies that developing incurs, Polke became increasingly devoted to exploring the magical and mysterious effects he could achieve by abandoning the rules altogether.

During the late 1960’s and 1970’s, Polke became an increasingly regular user of hallucinogenic drugs and the resulting sense of heightened visual and spiritual awareness he experienced is powerfully conveyed in the Quetta series, executed following a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1974. Polke did not return with snapshots of the Khyber Pass nor majestic Muslim temples but rather with images of human existence that touched the existential dilemma of “who are we?” and reverberate with Polke’s own experience. He gives us Pakistani opium smokers huddled in claustrophobic dens and Afghani pot smokers at a bear fight, laboriously hand-coloured with egg-tempera inks and gold and silver paint: images “that ultimately become some of the most visually exquisite most carefully crafted photographs in his entire oeuvre.” (Paul Schimmel in Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, Sigmar Polke Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish, 2002, p. 72)

Quetta, one of the largest examples from the series, shows Polke continuing to explore the nature and expressive limitations of photographs, dynamically enhancing the monochrome of the black and white printed image through his exquisite over-painting of vibrant colour, and the masterful array of inscribed expressive pen marks. He donates to the image a lifelike vitality and heightened sense of exotic identity through the patches of superimposed colour, breathing life and form into the flatness of a photograph. This is complimented by the bold sense of depth and space Polke creates through his delicate, fluid line that weaves its way linguistically across the picture, and lures our gaze into the smoke filled depths of the background. The present work illustrates Polke at his most confident in this series, his interferences and elaborations increased to such a degree that the image takes on a meaning independent of its original source. Importantly, Quetta demonstrates the artist’s idiosyncratic attitude towards photography: namely that “a negative is never finished.”