Lot Essay
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Polke's work was greatly influenced by his experiments with halluceogenic drugs. Very much a part of the prevailing culture of the time, hallucinogens break down the structure of the way we see the world and pose questions about the nature of "perceived" reality. Believing, like Gerhard Richter, that our conventional everyday image of reality is "limited and incomplete", Polke put his experience with hallucinogens to good use in the way he constructed his paintings. Through the use of a complex play of contrasting imagery, form and style, Polke deliberately sought to expose the enigmatic and multilayered nature of our perceptions and, in doing so, approach a wider and more complete understanding of reality.
This work is the second in a pair of paintings painted in 1971 entitled Tibersprung (Tiber-Leap) (see fig. 1). The title of these works almost certainly refers to an earlier work of Polke's from 1969 entitled Tibertücher (Tiber-Cloths) where, as the critic Bice Curiger has pointed out, it was Polke's deliberate aim to use the picture surface as a "locus of re-evaluation" and as a "source of agitation" about the way we perceive the world. Inscribed on Tibertücher were the following two phrases which may well have been the inspiration behind the two later Tibersprung paintings. The first phrase reads, "Berlioz had been trying in vain to find a melody for a text. Suddenly he found himself humming the melody he was looking for as he surfaced again after diving headfirst into the Tiber." And the second, "The Tiber had been trying in vain to find a headfirst dive for its text. Suddenly it was humming the melody as the surface Berliozed after swimming." (Bice Curiger, Sigmar Polke: The Man with the Magnifying Glass, 1992, p. 58).
These two phrases are mirror images of one another describing the same event from the perspective of Berlioz and from the river Tiber. It is a simple but effective linguistic technique of wordplay that echoes very much the kind of games that Polke plays with the images in his paintings. The overall effect and indeed the point of the exercise is to show a multiperspectival view of one event. In this respect the two Tibersprung paintings with their two leaping figures can also be seen to each represent a Berlioz leaping into or out of the Tiber.
In the present work, Tibersprung II, the graphic painting-by-numbers means of conveying the imagery of the picture is directly contrasted with a splattered and random star-like abstract pattern of black dots so as to set the scene in some kind of metaphysical space. In this realm the bedspread can also be seen as a rolling hill landscape and the blue at the bottom of the picture could indeed be a river, but nothing is certain in the other reality that Polke creates in his pictures. Everything is and is not at the same time.
The image of the central figure leaping over the bed is one that evidently held some importance for Polke as he repeats it in his double canvas Lucky Luke and his Friend of 1971-75. Ideas of levitation, of flying and gravitation have always played an important part in Polke's art (see his film: Der ganze Körper fühlt sich leicht und möchte fliegen - The Whole Body Feels Light and Wants to Fly - and also the paintings Polke als Astronaut 1968, Scissors 1982 and Alice in Wonderland, 1971, fig. 2). With their emphasis on leaping the two Tiberspruung paintings can also be seen as an autobiographical reference to Polke's desire to explore the new realities his experiment with hallucinogens had revealed to him. For here, as in many of his pictures from this period, a hallucinatory reality is created in which Polke plays out what the critic Robert Storr has called an "enduring dynamic between reason and terror, expanded consciousness and derangement". (In: "Art in America", Robert Storr, Polke's Mind Tatoos, December 1992, p. 71).
This work is the second in a pair of paintings painted in 1971 entitled Tibersprung (Tiber-Leap) (see fig. 1). The title of these works almost certainly refers to an earlier work of Polke's from 1969 entitled Tibertücher (Tiber-Cloths) where, as the critic Bice Curiger has pointed out, it was Polke's deliberate aim to use the picture surface as a "locus of re-evaluation" and as a "source of agitation" about the way we perceive the world. Inscribed on Tibertücher were the following two phrases which may well have been the inspiration behind the two later Tibersprung paintings. The first phrase reads, "Berlioz had been trying in vain to find a melody for a text. Suddenly he found himself humming the melody he was looking for as he surfaced again after diving headfirst into the Tiber." And the second, "The Tiber had been trying in vain to find a headfirst dive for its text. Suddenly it was humming the melody as the surface Berliozed after swimming." (Bice Curiger, Sigmar Polke: The Man with the Magnifying Glass, 1992, p. 58).
These two phrases are mirror images of one another describing the same event from the perspective of Berlioz and from the river Tiber. It is a simple but effective linguistic technique of wordplay that echoes very much the kind of games that Polke plays with the images in his paintings. The overall effect and indeed the point of the exercise is to show a multiperspectival view of one event. In this respect the two Tibersprung paintings with their two leaping figures can also be seen to each represent a Berlioz leaping into or out of the Tiber.
In the present work, Tibersprung II, the graphic painting-by-numbers means of conveying the imagery of the picture is directly contrasted with a splattered and random star-like abstract pattern of black dots so as to set the scene in some kind of metaphysical space. In this realm the bedspread can also be seen as a rolling hill landscape and the blue at the bottom of the picture could indeed be a river, but nothing is certain in the other reality that Polke creates in his pictures. Everything is and is not at the same time.
The image of the central figure leaping over the bed is one that evidently held some importance for Polke as he repeats it in his double canvas Lucky Luke and his Friend of 1971-75. Ideas of levitation, of flying and gravitation have always played an important part in Polke's art (see his film: Der ganze Körper fühlt sich leicht und möchte fliegen - The Whole Body Feels Light and Wants to Fly - and also the paintings Polke als Astronaut 1968, Scissors 1982 and Alice in Wonderland, 1971, fig. 2). With their emphasis on leaping the two Tiberspruung paintings can also be seen as an autobiographical reference to Polke's desire to explore the new realities his experiment with hallucinogens had revealed to him. For here, as in many of his pictures from this period, a hallucinatory reality is created in which Polke plays out what the critic Robert Storr has called an "enduring dynamic between reason and terror, expanded consciousness and derangement". (In: "Art in America", Robert Storr, Polke's Mind Tatoos, December 1992, p. 71).