Lot 124
  • 124

SIGMAR POLKE | Untitled

Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Sigmar Polke
  • Untitled
  • signed and dated 92 
  • acrylic and gouache on paper
  • 69.5 by 100.3 cm. 27 3/8 by 39 1/2 in.

Provenance

Galerie Erhard Klein, Bonn
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1992)
Christie's, London, 17 October 2015, Lot 248
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

Madrid, Goethe Institut, El Mundo Imaginado: Obras Sobre Papel del Arte Contemporáneo Alemán, 1992, p. 75, illustrated in colour

Catalogue Note

Fascinatingly complex and multifariously composite, Untitled, is a testament to an oeuvre that is defined by reckless experimentation. Over the course of five decades, Sigmar Polke rebelliously destabilised the boundaries between media, appropriated manifold sources, and melded together every binary opposition imaginable, becoming the true opponent of Contemporary art. The present work, encompassing abstraction and figuration, as well as premeditation and chance, is an intriguing synthesis of the styles and methods which Polke evolved over the course of his practice.
In a hallmark gesture familiar to the artist’s innovative exploration of paint and pigment, here Polke lets a pale blue spill over a white ground, allowing gravity and accident to trace a spidery network. Modifying the unpredictable crystalline patterns which result, the artist tints a random selection of the cells, causing a faint blush to spread over the left side of the work. On top of this random pattern which results, the artist layers figures in three of his signature styles. To the left in a delicately-brushed caricature, a short-tempered woman lectures an irate man dressed haughty in a fish costume. In its cartoonish subject matter and linear style, this illustration recalls Polke’s earlier works, such as Spiderman, from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. On the right of Untitled, Polke appropriates a woodcut of a puppeteer, instantly recognisable from its expressionistic marks, which appear as if carved between bold black outlines. Throughout his practice, Polke ceaselessly lifted motifs from prints, transforming and distorting the woodcuts, lithographs and etchings he stumbled upon into a richly ambiguous personal iconography. The present work reveals the artist’s method for transferring these images into his work: on the coat of the puppeteer, the areas to become highlights are outlined, while the black around them is yet to be filled in, creating a daintily linear image.
In the centre of Untitled, the artist employs his most iconic technique, diligently hand-painting a lattice of raster dots. As the marks swirl and each dot loses its individuality, a barely coherent image of a soldier emerges. In the constant shift of the raster dots, coming together and dissolving, the artist found the perfect visual equivalent for his oscillating vision of reality: “I like the way that the dots in a magnified picture swim and move about. The way that motifs change from recognisable to unrecognisable, the undecided, ambiguous nature of the situation, the way it remains open. Many dots vibrating, swinging, blurring, reappearing: one could think of radio signals, telegraphic images, television come to mind" (Sigmar Polke cited in: Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern, Alibis: Sigmar Polke, 1963-2010, 2015, p. 74). In Untitled, with the irrational patterning of its abstract ground, the hypnotic flux of its raster dots, with the mesmeric mosaic of its images, Polke creates a work whose layers become unfixed and fluid, constantly multiplying into an alluring infinity of new meanings.