.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This hand-colored photograph is a staggering example of Sigmar Polke's innovation across different mediums. The artist-who was born in eastern Germany in 1941, but moved to Dseldorf at age twelve-began experimenting with photography while a student at the city's Art Academy in the early 1960s, and the medium has affected his painting practice in profound ways.
Polke's work in photography, like his work in painting, is distinctly postmodern in its appropriation of diverse imagery, blend of technical methods, and embrace of chance procedures. The 1980s was a fertile period of process-driven, alchemical experimentation for him. He used unorthodox and idiosyncratic materials, pigments, and chemicals, mixing them together for unexpected reactions and printing on unconventional materials such as polyester fabric. Interior, a gelatin silver print, contains the amalgamation of abstract and representational imagery that has long characterized Polke's work, and its hand coloring imparts a resolutely painterly dimension to the image. A spattering of small black spots harks back to his foundational "dot" series of the 1960s, while the clashing color combinations and smeary, edge-to-edge paint application recalls the vaunted body of abstract expressionist painting that was upstaged by Pop art and Capitalist Realism. Painting and photography are not separate enterprises for Polke, but rather practices that affect, enhance, and embolden one another.
Polke's work in photography, like his work in painting, is distinctly postmodern in its appropriation of diverse imagery, blend of technical methods, and embrace of chance procedures. The 1980s was a fertile period of process-driven, alchemical experimentation for him. He used unorthodox and idiosyncratic materials, pigments, and chemicals, mixing them together for unexpected reactions and printing on unconventional materials such as polyester fabric. Interior, a gelatin silver print, contains the amalgamation of abstract and representational imagery that has long characterized Polke's work, and its hand coloring imparts a resolutely painterly dimension to the image. A spattering of small black spots harks back to his foundational "dot" series of the 1960s, while the clashing color combinations and smeary, edge-to-edge paint application recalls the vaunted body of abstract expressionist painting that was upstaged by Pop art and Capitalist Realism. Painting and photography are not separate enterprises for Polke, but rather practices that affect, enhance, and embolden one another.