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Lot Essay
Sigmar Polke has held the attention of the international art world since he organized the exhibition Capitalist Realism in 1963, while still a student at the Art Academy in Dseldorf. That show featured his own politically-inflected version of Pop art, and Polke's career has since been marked by a fluency in several different mediums and styles-which are often combined in one work-and a pointed, inventive disregard for traditional artistic materials and means. He published this suite of fourteen photogravures shortly after finishing school. A self-taught photographer, he had experimented with the medium before by incorporating photographs into his paintings and sculptures. But this series, made with a camera borrowed from a friend, was likely his first direct use of photography. Polke would go on to take thousands of pictures over the next several decades, and photography greatly influences his work in painting.
The German phrase Hoehere Wesen Befehlen, which translates to "Higher Powers Command," also served as the title for several drawings and mixed media works Polke made a few years earlier. Their black-and-white starkness, deadpan frontality, and accompanying texts lend the series the feel of a guide or schoolbook, but a more dissonant, whimsical, and prankish tone emerges. For the captions name nonsensical objects, thus turning them into improbable sculptures-Button Palm, Balloon Palm, Glove Palm, Bread Palm, Cotton Palm. The common term might reference the palm of Polke's hand in which the camera rested, or the mysticism of palm reading, or the expressions of exasperation in German that feature the word "palme."
The small imperfections, range of focus, and slight over- or underexposure of some of these photographs foresee how Polke would experiment with different chemical developers and fixers in the years following their publication. His tests often resulted in mistakes and unintended effects, which he did not correct or discard but instead incorporated into the final work-an index of the fertile experimentation with different mediums that continues to characterize Polke's irreverent production.
The German phrase Hoehere Wesen Befehlen, which translates to "Higher Powers Command," also served as the title for several drawings and mixed media works Polke made a few years earlier. Their black-and-white starkness, deadpan frontality, and accompanying texts lend the series the feel of a guide or schoolbook, but a more dissonant, whimsical, and prankish tone emerges. For the captions name nonsensical objects, thus turning them into improbable sculptures-Button Palm, Balloon Palm, Glove Palm, Bread Palm, Cotton Palm. The common term might reference the palm of Polke's hand in which the camera rested, or the mysticism of palm reading, or the expressions of exasperation in German that feature the word "palme."
The small imperfections, range of focus, and slight over- or underexposure of some of these photographs foresee how Polke would experiment with different chemical developers and fixers in the years following their publication. His tests often resulted in mistakes and unintended effects, which he did not correct or discard but instead incorporated into the final work-an index of the fertile experimentation with different mediums that continues to characterize Polke's irreverent production.