Lucy Degens is an art historian as well as media and culture studies scholar. She is currently completing her master’s degree in Art Education and Cultural Management at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf with a thesis on the Gaspelshof commune in Willich. Since 2016 she has worked for various museums, galleries, and associations, particularly in the Rhineland and Berlin. Her research focuses on contemporary and post-war art.
Scholarship 2022 - Lucy Degens, Collective life and work with Sigmar Polke at Gaspelshof in Willich
Lucy Degens, Collective life and work with Sigmar Polke at Gaspelshof in Willich
“Well, you know, sometimes I need to work alone; and sometimes I need to work with others; and sometimes it is necessary to just play.”[1]
Such was Sigmar Polke’s response to Barbara Reise, who visited him in 1976 at Gaspelshof in Willich. The artist lived on this former farm from 1972 to 1978 in a dynamic communal life involving various acquaintances. Frequently referred to as a “hippiesque commune,” its beds were temporarily occupied by a series of ever-changing guests.[2] The former gallerist Erhard Klein described it as a culture involving “Lots of drinking, smoking hash, making love, painting, travelling, making music and working.”[3] Such a lifestyle manifested itself in collaborative works and exhibitions, such as the show Mu Nieltnam Netorruprup, held in 1975, a group exhibition involving Achim Duchow, Astrid Heibach, and Memphis Schulze,[4] the artists’ newspaper Day by Day … They Take Some Brain Away and participation in the 13th Bienal de São Paulo, making the 1970s a conspicuous period in the work of both Polke and others. Working together with other artists was a process that occurred almost naturally, a necessity embedded in Gaspelshof and the 1970s.
The significance of this period for Sigmar Polke’s work has been explored several times, especially during the 2000s and 2010s. Evidence of such interest include exhibitions at Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2009, Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014, and Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Siegen in 2019. The collective life and work in Willich was however examined with a particular focus on Sigmar Polke and the period of the 1970s, omitting temporal contexts and the influence of artists spending time in Willich. Any addressing of the artistic exchanges that occurred at Gaspelshof has, to date, remained superficial and often one-sided, in that Polke (especially with regard to Achim Duchow) is retrospectively presented as not only the source of ideas but also the author of collaborative products.[5] The exclusive focus of these recent exhibitions concerning the 1970s threatens to engender a temporal decontextualization of this creative period. As early as the 1960s, the collective genesis of works and issues of multiple authorship – for example collaborations with Christof Kohlhöfer and Gerhard Richter – were part of Polke’s practice. Such a development forms a principal element of the present art historical investigation.
In discussions with contemporary witnesses and a reassessment of works and documents from the 1970s, the objective of the present research is to enhance information concerning life at Gaspelshof and to provide a basis on which the art created there can be contextualized and surveyed as a whole. The research interest is one of expanding the existing exclusionary approaches involving only isolated groups of works by Sigmar Polke and to outline wider historical and social contexts.
[1] Reise, Barbara: Who, What Is ‘Sigmar Polke’, in: Studio International, 982.1976, p. 84.
[2] Steffen, Katharina: Day by Day … ein Flashback mit Zukunft, in: Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries, eds. Petra Lange-Berndt/Dietmar Rübel (Hamburg, Kunsthalle Hamburg, March 13, 2009 to January 17, 2010) Cologne 2009, p. 296.
[3] Sigmar Polke. Photographs (1964-1990), eds. Silke Lemmes/Bianca Quasebarth (Düsseldorf, Sies + Höke,
June 28 to August 28, 2021; Berlin, Galerie Kicken, January 21 to March 4, 2022) Düsseldorf/Berlin 2022, p. 88.
[4] Lange-Berndt, Petra/ Rübel, Dietmar: Third Reich’n’Roll. Nationalsozialismus als Tabu und Provokation, in: Singular/Plural. Kollaborationen in der Post-Pop-Polit-Arena Düsseldorf 1969–1980, eds. Petra Lange-Berndt/ Dietmar Rübel/Max Schulze/Gregor Jansen (Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, July 8 to October 1) Cologne 2017, p. 125.
[5]Schulze, Max: A Planet Where Time Misbehaves, in: Singular/Plural. Kollaborationen in der Post-Pop-Polit-Arena Düsseldorf 1969–1980, eds. Petra Lange-Berndt/ Dietmar Rübel / Max Schulze/ Gregor Jansen (Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, July 8 to October 1) Cologne 2017, p 183.