.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
"It is clear that a progressive scientific approach like my own can no longer concern itself with boorish causalities or self-satisfied reasons but must focus instead upon relationships, since without relationships, even causality itself itself might just as well pack up and leave, and every reason would be without consequence. Thus in my scientific work I concentrated upon the exploration of those relationships which genuinely bind things together, beyond their tendentious subdivision into "causes" and "effects"... This whole system of classifying things as causes and effects must come to an end! We must create a world of free and equal phenomena, a world in which things are finally allowed to form relationships once again, relationships from the bonds of servile text-book causality and narrow-minded, finger-pointing consecution...(for) only in these relationships is it possible to find the true meaning and the true order of things..." (Sigmar Polke, "Early Influences, Later Consequences......" reproduced in "Sigmar Polke--The Three Lines of Painting", Cantz Verlag 1997. pp. 289-290)
In this outstanding work of 1982 consisting of four contrasting canvases, Polke uses a myriad of differing styles to present a subtle recurring relationship of forms through a series of unrelated contexts.
The first of these four canvases presents a series of geometric patterns that, in a technique often used by the artist, subvert the context of traditional canvas to form an elaborate ready-made backcloth for the painting. Over this quilted collage of a background Polke has painted a number of diagramatic shapes, some of which--the arabesque curves of the left hand diagram in particular--are clearly echoed in a variety of styles in the following three panels.
Each of the four panels is represented in a painted style quite unlike that of any of the others, in keeping with Polke's refusal to allow his art to become formulaic by restricting it to any one form of representation. Instead, as a means of allowing an infinite number of associations to take place within and between the pictures, Polke deliberately contrasts the painterly style of each panel and yet repeats certain motifs and forms--drawn undoubtedly from differing source material--in each of the four panels so that a visual associative meaning that seems to lie beyond the rational, is elaborated by the work as a whole.
In this outstanding work of 1982 consisting of four contrasting canvases, Polke uses a myriad of differing styles to present a subtle recurring relationship of forms through a series of unrelated contexts.
The first of these four canvases presents a series of geometric patterns that, in a technique often used by the artist, subvert the context of traditional canvas to form an elaborate ready-made backcloth for the painting. Over this quilted collage of a background Polke has painted a number of diagramatic shapes, some of which--the arabesque curves of the left hand diagram in particular--are clearly echoed in a variety of styles in the following three panels.
Each of the four panels is represented in a painted style quite unlike that of any of the others, in keeping with Polke's refusal to allow his art to become formulaic by restricting it to any one form of representation. Instead, as a means of allowing an infinite number of associations to take place within and between the pictures, Polke deliberately contrasts the painterly style of each panel and yet repeats certain motifs and forms--drawn undoubtedly from differing source material--in each of the four panels so that a visual associative meaning that seems to lie beyond the rational, is elaborated by the work as a whole.