"Higher Beings Ordain", complete portfolio of 14 framed prints, Berlin 1960s

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Sigmar Polke
"Higher Beings Ordain", complete portfolio of 14 framed prints, Berlin 1960s
1968

About the Item

Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) was one of the most important german artists of the late 20th century. In 1961 he joined with Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg and Gerhard Richter the class of Karl Otto Götz at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and these four upcoming artists presented their latest works in an in their own initiative curated exhibition to bring the newest art movements from oversea and Paris to Germany. On the invitation cards they printed the terminologies „Pop Art, Junk Culture, Nouveau Realisme, Common Object Painting, Neo Dada, New Vulgarismus, Antikunst, Know-Nothing-Genre“ and they proclaimed for theirselves to be the first artists to show a indepently grown Pop Art in Germany, not just as a copy or American import. But Polke showed right from the beginning an ironic distance to the sociocritical style of his combatants, that will run through his entire Ouevre. Influenced by the Fluxus and Neo Dada scene around Joseph Beuys, Daniel Spoerri, Dick Higgins and others in the early 1960s Polke developed is own style characterised by an anarchic mind and esprit. Simliar to the Pop Art Polke searched for the asthetic in the trivial but here too he simoultanesly disavowed the trivial through irony. Very typical for Polke are the famous grid images, known from newspaper printings, where there are horizontal, uniform lines of small dots and by combining certain dots there arises a form. By using perforated sheets and airbrush he could overlay more monochrome grids to create vibrating images and he often played in the printing process with enforced mistakes and errors to disassemble the firm surface of an image to a process of dekomposition. Next to irony and anarchy other keywords to his works are heterogeneity, polyperspectivity and multivalent metamorphoses in which every reality could be something possibly different at the same time. A world where everything is connected; not by fundamental unity but by fragmentary dispersion. Because there is no one true reality, he transfers his works in an intermediate state of transformability. ".....Höhere Wesen befehlen" [...Higher Beings Ordain] 14 offset lithographs after photographs by Polke and Chris Kohlhöfer on beige art paper each 22.2 x 16 cm (print sizes) each 29.7 x 20.9 cm (sheet sizes) each 44.3 x 35.7 cm (frame sizes) Edition of 80 and a few prints outside the complete portfolio. Cat. Rais. (Edit. Becker/von der Osten) Nr. 8. The portfolio was published by the Gallery René Block, Berlin, in 1968. As mentioned in the Catalogue Raisonnée by von der Osten they published 50 portfolios with two text pages and four drawings. They were numbered but most of them weren't signed like the 30 more editions, that weren't signed or numbered and which were published without the drawings. In addition to the edition of 80, there are also a few multiple prints of individual photos, which vary depending on the motif. These 14 photo-prints belong to the unsigned and unnumbered edition of 30 and are framed in black wooden frames by the workshop of the Gallery Heinz Holtmann, Schüller, Eifel, Germany. The 14 prints are composed of different series from the years 1966-68. They are not intended to be simple images of objects or actions, but to function as direct carriers of the idea of what is shown. The objects shown do not exist either, but were created for the sole purpose of showing them as photographs. The majority of the portfolio consists of the "Palmenserie" (Palm Series, 1966), which show various materials in different states in the form of palm trees. The photo "Decke" (Blanket, 1967) is a psychoplastic based on Polke's earlier experiences and shows a blanket in which the outline of a female figure is repeatedly folded; "Der Doppelgänger" (The Double, 1968) is not so much about the resemblance between two people, but rather about the simultaneous presence of Polke's person in different places; "Die Korrektur der Handlinien" (The Correction of the Hand Lines, 1968) shows Polke's hand after he decided to paint over his hand lines; "Das Entblättern eines Baumes" (The Defoliation of a Tree, 1968) is from a two-and-a-half hour action in August 1968 that was widely regarded as criminal; "Der Baum, der meinetwegen hohl gewachsen ist" (The Tree that grew hollow because of me, 1968) was described by Polke simply as a relationship delusion and "Peitsche" (The Whip, 1968) shows a whip with photos attached to straps that could be used to whip what you want.

Creator:
Sigmar Polke (1941 - 2010, German)
Creation Year:
1968
Dimensions:
Height: 17.45 in (44.3 cm)Width: 14.06 in (35.7 cm)
Medium:
Paper,Offset,Lithograph
Movement & Style:
Post-War
Period:
Late 20th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Cologne, DE
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU134428035332

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