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Sotheby's
Contemporary Art Evening Auction
London | 10 Feb 2015, 06:30 PM | L15020
LOT 40
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
SIGMAR POLKE
1941 - 2010
OHNE TITEL (PORTRÄTIST)
signed and dated 79
gouache, spray paint and pencil on paper
69.5 by 99.5cm.; 27 3/8 by 39 1/4 in.
ESTIMATE 300,000-400,000 GBP
Lot Sold: 617,000 GBP
PROVENANCE
Galerie Hajo Müller, Cologne
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1987
EXHIBITED
London, Tate Gallery; Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, The Froehlich
Foundation. German and American Art from Beuys and Warhol, 1996-97, p. 117, no. 225, illustrated in colour
Liverpool, Tate Gallery, Contemporary German and American Art from the Froehlich Collection, 1999
Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst, Sigmar Polke: Werke aus der Sammlung Froehlich, 2000, pp. 102-03, no. 64,
illustrated in colour
London, Tate Modern, on loan to the collection, 2003-04
Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst im ZKM, on loan to the collection, 2004
Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda; and Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Polke: eine
Retrospektive, 2007, pp. 200-01, no. 146, illustrated in colour
CATALOGUE NOTE
A multi-layered and fluid work, with its fusion of abstraction and figuration, appropriation of Pop imagery, Ohne Titel
(Porträtist) strikingly experiments with several elements that were of particular importance to Sigmar Polke's artistic
output during the 1970s. The present work finds its genesis in the monumental ten-part series We Petty Bourgeouis,
executed between 1974 and 1976, which consists of a collection of large-format gouaches on paper, merging the
abstract with overlapping figures and quotations drawn from contemporaneous popular culture.
In Ohne Titel (Porträtist) the viewer is able to discern four figures, consisting of two portraitists and two sitters, through
the arching sweep of the blue, yellow and olive-green gouache. The figures have been rendered with a profusion of
overlapping and condensing lines, reminiscent of both photography, with its multiples and re-exposures, and the
image flow of animated films, two mediums that profoundly interested Polke during the 1970s. Evelyn Weiss’
description of Polke’s work from this decade is apt: she states that the pictorial elements are "layered on top of one
another, intersect or shine through; the front and back are in constant motion; no sooner than you have adjusted your
focus, the so-called background comes forward" (Evelyn Weiss quoted in: Petra Lange-Berndt and Dietmar Rübel,
Eds., Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois, Cologne 2001, p. 33).
Ohne Titel (Porträtist) embodies Polke’s recurrent enthusiasm in juxtaposing the figurative with the abstract,
expounding his belief that these techniques should have a complimentary relationship, rather than being considered
diametrically opposed. However, this relationship is also complex and the superimposition of images from popular
culture with non-figurative painting techniques creates a certain tension. With these juxtapositions and tensions, the
artist is able to create a dreamlike, hallucinogenic world, in which reality and meaning are questioned; a phenomenon
emblematic of Polke’s career.
The figures themselves are created using a graphic Pop art vocabulary, directly comparable to works from the We
Petty Bourgeois series, such as Supermarkets or Can You Always Believe Your Eyes?. However, Polke’s multiplicity
and simultaneity of stylistic elements in the 1970s made him a specifically postmodern Pop artist and, indeed, by
1979, the year of the present work’s creation, Pop art could be characterised as little more than a historical positon in
both Germany and the United States. Here, perhaps, it is the graphic line synonymous with Pop imagery, rather than
the imagery itself, that attracts Polke’s attention, allowing him to create such a striking contrast with the undulous
waves of gouache that encircle the composition. The figures are also a testament to Polke’s extraordinary ability as a
draftsman, a skill that is not emphasised enough, perhaps due to his predominately ‘de-skilled’ and simplistic drawings
of the 1960s.
Constantly in flux, with its intelligent combination of line and colour, abstraction and figuration, gouache and pencil,
Ohne Titel (Porträtist) expresses several themes consistent in Polke’s 1970s output and, with its nebulous and
merging clouds of colour, foreshadows some of the effects created by Polke in his chemical and alchemical
experimentations of the 1980s. Ohne Titel (Porträtist) should then be considered both as a significant work of the
1970s in its own right and as a critical step in Polke’s unrelenting artistic evolution.