Sigmar Polke

Galerie Crousel-Robelin Bama, Paris

Collection Labeyrie, France (acquired from the above in 1990)

Galerie Kewenig, Berlin

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2010

Paris, Galerie Crousel-Robelin Bama, Sigmar Polke: Peintures Récentes, 1990 

Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Passions Privées: Collections Particulières d'Art Moderne et Contemporain en France, 1995-96, p. 588, no. 5, illustrated

Vizille, Musée de la Revolution Française, Sigmar Polke et la Révolution française, 2001, p. 67, no. 14, illustrated in colour; and p. 106, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original and fails to convey the metallic quality of the gold paint. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals a few tiny fly spots in isolated places towards the centre and a minute spot of wear to the lower right corner tip. There is a light stretcher mark to the centre right of the composition. There is evidence of oxidation to the figurative elements towards the bottom left which appear black as a natural result of the ageing process of the metallic paint used by the artist. The artist was fully aware that this process would occur and intended his works to develop in this manner over time as can be seen in other works. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Executed in 1989, exactly two centuries after the start of the French Revolution, Forêt Nationale is part of a diverse series of twenty-two paintings created on the occasion of the Revolution’s bicentenary. An intriguing amalgamation of Sigmar Polke’s unique stylistic lexicon of dot patterns, printed fabrics and fluid fields of dispersion, these works summarise the artist’s idiosyncratic oeuvre of the past decades, whilst their potent symbolic imagery pre-empted his venerated allegorical history paintings of subsequent years. Amid this arsenal of styles and techniques, the series demonstrates Polke’s ceaseless deconstruction of the illusions and conventions associated with the painted image and his overarching belief in the transformative potential of art. Appropriating historic iconographies that range from severed heads and hybrid creatures to Rouget de Lisle’s famous composition of the Marseillaise, the works portray both the pathos and ideological enlightenment of the French Revolution. Rich in visual references, the series conjures potent socio-political issues still paramount two centuries later. First presented in two exhibitions at the Crousel-Robelin Bama contemporary art gallery in Paris between 1988 and 1990, the series includes works such as, Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité, which resides in the Brandhorst Collection, Munich; A Versailles, à Versailles held in the Musée de Rochechouart; and Jeux d’enfants owned by the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris. A multifaceted work where compositional complexity fluctuates between classical figuration, rhythmic patterns, and the disorganised chaos of fluid abstraction, Forêt Nationale is one of the most elaborate works from the series.

Bursts of bright white stand out from the cacophonous tribal print that recalls the artist’s revered Fabric Pictures of the 1960s. Adorning the right section of these visual accents are white imprints of twigs on looping tendrils of blue spray paint, whilst on the left a forest scene is presented on a field of white. Appropriating an engraved letterhead used by the administration des Fôret Nationale at the time of the Directoire (the French government in power during the penultimate stage of the French Revolution 1795–1799) the image depicts a dog resting underneath a blooming tree, flanked by a raised battle helmet and sword. Whilst death and violence are the major protagonists in works such as Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité, which presents three severed heads raised on spikes, and Le Jour de gloire est arrivé, where the steps of the church Saint-Roch in Paris are strewn with corpses, the adopted emblem of the national administration in Fôret Nationale conjures a more optimistic portrayal of the revolution. In fact, of the twenty-two paintings in the series Forêt Nationale and L'Homme chantant la Marseillaise are the only two paintings that give a luminous image of the events. The weapons, presented like war trophies on the sunlit clearing of Forêt Nationale, conjure a jubilant image of victory. Furthermore, the shadows of twigs and branches invoke the promise of new life blossoming over the rubble of war and symbolise major changes in French forestry installed during the Revolution. This saw the abolition of privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy, whereby royal forests became state owned, herein seen as a symbol for the collective possession of land and the budding ideals of equal rights.

Given his interest in history Polke could not help but be inspired by the approaching celebrations for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, whilst preparing for his first major exhibition at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1988. A momentous period of social and political upheaval that prompted the global decline of absolute monarchies in favour of a Republic, the French Revolution profoundly altered the course of history. Considering Polke’s own upbringing under the totalitarianism of East Germany’s communist regime and the impending fall of the Berlin Wall a year later, the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity could not have been more pertinent. Hugely influenced by Joseph Beuys, his professor at the Dusseldorf Academy, who promoted an art that confronted Germans with their own painful past, Polke deliberated the wider social, political and cultural relevance of such a cataclysmic period as the French Revolution through its images and iconographies. With a distinctly post-war suspicion of all ideology and dogmatic thinking, these works map the current of history, the propagation of human sciences and philosophies, the role of images and most importantly the implication of historical fate. Combining expressive coils of vigorous blue, vibrant fragments of tribal print and the potent iconography of the Enlightenment, Forêt Nationale epitomises Polke’s idiosyncratic ability to create vividly abstract yet concurrently representative paintings.