One of the most significant artists of his generation, Sigmar Polke came of age creatively around 1963 in Dsseldorf. His earliest expressive idiom was crude and humorous, its images outrageous, and its content seemingly trivial, but embedded in these works were subversive and parodic commentaries on consumer society, German postwar politics, and classic artistic conventions. Few of Polke's works demonstrate more vividly his imagination, sardonic wit, and eclectic creative process than the drawings, watercolors, and gouaches of the 1960s and early 70s. More than 300 works are illustrated, including small sketches in ballpoint and felt-tipped pen, larger sheets in watercolor and gouache, and still others stamped with a dot screen process, as well as pages from over a dozen small sketchbooks and several monumental works on paper. This books was published to accopany the first American exhibiton of these drawings shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1999.
Sigmar Polke: Works on Paper, 1963-1974 accompanies the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition of drawings, watercolors, and gouaches by this famous German painter. Polke's works on paper are beautiful and funny with strong tinges of emotion.
Potato Heads: Nixon and Khrushchev, from 1965, is a colorful watercolor line drawing of two world leaders with bulbous heads and green polka dots. His almost-comic-book style can be both sweet, as in
Young Peas, an image from 1963 with quickly drawn circles, and unnerving--an untitled gouache from 1965 depicts a ghostly figure and a swastika. Polke was born at the end of WWII and came of artistic age at a time when Germany was undergoing major cultural changes. It was during this period of the 1960s that abstract expressionism was taking over the art scene, yet Polke was committing himself to "an idiom that was crude and humorous, its images outrageous, its content seemingly trivial, and its social message obvious although ambivalent." His drawings from this era highlight his interests in culture, politics, and urban life more obviously than his later paintings, photographs, and screen printings. Also included in the catalog are images from Polke's sketchbook and essays by Michael Semff, Bice Curiger, and Margit Rowell. This book is a wonderful opportunity to explore Polke's early art, and it marks the first time that his works on paper have been shown together.
--Jennifer Cohen 200 pages, 326 illustrations including 299 in color.
