Polke Post 24 - New release: Die Kunstakademie 1773–2023, with a text by Sophia Stang about the beginnings of Capitalist Realism

­ In 1963, the artists Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter organized an exhibition of their works in a vacant store at Kaiserstraße 31a that later went down in art history as the beginning of several collaborative actions under the banner of Capitalist Realism. The four artists had met in K.O. Götz’s class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf a year earlier, in the summer semester of 1962, and had begun looking for attractive venues to present their own works away from the academy. From their very first show, they sought to influence the reception of their works by using carefully selected terms on the collaged invitation as well as their own comments in the guest book displayed at the venue (“Kein Geld für wilde Tiere,” which translates as “no money for wild animals”). In this edition of POLKE POST, we share an excerpt from an essay by Sophia Stang that was recently published in a volume celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Kunstakademie. The essay explores the first joint show by the four students, which was also the first time that Sigmar Polke had ever participated in an exhibition. Her reconstruction of the works on display contains a few surprises … Manfred Kuttner’s photographs document the well-attended opening day (fig. 1). […] The store window on Kaiserstraße (fig. 2) featured an arrangement composed of Manfred Kuttner’s Heiliger Stuhl (Holy Chair, 1962, cat. 47); Konrad Lueg’s OWO, a detergent package with an inverted M in the logo; Richter’s object, which consisted of two dolls and glass frames; and Polke’s Massenmedien (Mass Media), a pile of magazines bound together and hanging on a string. In a similar process to Rauschenberg’s solvent transfer technique, Lueg had used solvents to transfer fragmented motifs from print media—including smiling women’s faces and tubes of toothpaste—onto his canvases.[1] The six large-format works shown by Konrad Lueg in this exhibition were directly influenced by the works of Robert Rauschenberg, which he and his friends had seen together with works by Cy Twombly at Gallerie 22’s farewell exhibition in 1960. 
Gerhard Richter also presented six canvases, two of which (Tagebuch (Journal) and Erschießung (Firing Squad)) were subsequently shown at the Vorgartenausstellung (Front Garden Exhibition) at Galerie Parnass before being destroyed by the artist. His exhibited work Party (1963) refers to the “questionable, cheap, shallow, and ‘rotten’” side of the entertainment scene. To produce this image, Richter translated a photograph featuring the Swiss pop singer Vico Torriani enjoying a New Year’s Eve punch into a painting and added cuts and red paint to create, according to Yvonne Friedrichs in her article in the Rheinische Post, a “blood-soaked event.”[2]  

To date, it has not been possible to ascertain what Sigmar Polke exhibited apart from the object in the shop window in Kaiserstraße.[3] Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Capitalist Realism is generally used to describe Polke’s grid pictures, sausages, palm trees, and socks, which clearly support a critical interpretation of consumerism and society, but were not shown in relevant exhibitions until later in the 1960s, if at all.[4] Polke was the youngest of the exhibitors; it was the 22-year-old’s first time participating in a show, which is why his involvement here and in the subsequent joint presentations was less extensive.[5] During his studies, Polke created monochrome works on paper in the tradition of gestural painting, among other things, and after his orientation semester focused on painting over magazines. It is therefore not too far-fetched to identify the four small-format, reworked newspaper cuttings, including one that is an advertisement for the hairspray Binafix, as works by Polke (fig. 3). This supposition is supported by Yvonne Friedrich’s review of the Kaiserstraße exhibition, in which she mentions Polke’s embellishment of “existing magazine and advertising images”: “For example, a pretty model (from a fashion magazine) is transformed into a ‘Madonna’ by smudging the print with turpentine.” Similar to Lueg’s works, these works on paper address the image of women in advertisements for hairspray or toothpaste as well as the conservative sexism of the fashion, leisure, and household industries. As Friedrichs goes on to describe, “Creepy images from crime stories are reproduced in striking excerpts.”[6] Two works (not attributed to any of the others) behind Karin and Sigmar Polke in a photograph taken by Manfred Kuttner (fig. 4) fit this description and can also be attributed to Sigmar Polke’s oeuvre on the basis of stylistic criteria. The image depicting a woman and a man with the speech bubble “Du l[i?]ebst solange bis du stirbst” (“You live [love?] until you die”) is reminiscent of his early works such as Bikini Frau (Bikini Woman) or O.T. (Doppelportrait) (Untitled (Double Portrait); both 1963) and recalls the many depictions of lovers created from 1963 onward as well as the drawings in which Polke explores the effects of the tension between image and text. There are fewer identifiable references for the upper picture, which portrays a woman in a robe with another speech bubble. However, it can be seen again in a photograph of the Vorgartenausstellung in Wuppertal, leaning against the walls of the Villa Jährling on the left (fig. 5); the picture with the two heads stands in the snowy front garden (fig. 6).[7]  […] ­ ­

When looking at the works that were actually exhibited, especially those by Lueg and Polke, it is clear that this presentation in Kaiserstraße did not feature the petty bourgeois idols that would soon become the focus of their work and central to the perception of Capitalist Realism. The lifestyle and consumer habits of the Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) era were not necessarily the primary target of artistic exploration here (yet); instead, the spotlight was on the circulation of leisure and advertising images in the media as a continuation of K.O. Götz’s interest in information technology. When translating them into paintings, Kuttner, Lueg, Polke, and Richter reflected on the technology of images: fragmentation, enlargement, blurring, structure. In this context, they also interrogated the subjective nature of artistic expression in painting. The clichés reveal what is supposedly objective. Coupled with a new awareness of emerging forms of expression—actions and happenings—as well as a playful delight in ironic commentary, this remained intertwined with a reflection on painting that is presented as an “optical illusion” or a “picture puzzle.” 
 
Sophia Stang
 
 
This excerpt from the essay published in Die Kunstakademie Düsseldorf 1773–2023: Kunstgeschichte einer Institution, ed. Johannes Myssok (Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2024) has been edited slightly for this edition of POLKE POST. ­ ­ ­ ­

­ ­ ­ ­
[1] See Brigitte Kölle, “Die Kunst des Ausstellens: Untersuchungen zum Werk des Künstlers Konrad Fischer/Lueg (1939–1996),“ (dissertation, University of Hildesheim, 2005), p. 24. The six works are listed in the catalogue raisonné: Thomas Kellein, ed., Ich nenne mich als Maler Konrad Lueg, exh. cat. New York, 1999; Bielefeld, 1999/2000; Ghent, 2000 (Bielefeld, 1999), nos. 1–6, pp. 40–45. Three of the exhibited works have been preserved in the artist’s estate, but the other three are missing.  
[2] Yvonne Friedrichs, “Kulturelle Chronik—Die letzte Masche,“ Rheinische Post, 16/5/1963. The photograph from the Neue Illustrierte, 30/12/1962, can be found pasted into Richter’s Atlas, plate 9.                                           
[3] See for example Stephan Strsembski, “Kapitalistischer Realismus: Objekt und Kritik in der Kunst der 60er Jahre,” (dissertation, University of Cologne, 2008) (Hamburg, 2010), p. 56, who suspects that the article in the Rheinische Post inadvertently referred to Richter. 
[4] There is still no detailed analysis of his involvement. 
[5] Up to that point, Polke had certainly worked less than Richter, for example, who could look back on a period of study at the academy in Dresden and had, by his own admission, already plastered the classroom up to the ceiling with informal works after a few months of frenzied working at the beginning of his studies in Düsseldorf. Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter, Maler (Cologne, 2002), pp. 48, 50.
[6] Friedrichs 1963 (see note 2). The article in the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten dated 29/5/1963 should also be interpreted in the same way: “Polke’s compilation of advertisements, comics, etc. are still lacking a defined approach. They pale in comparison to the sharpness of Richter’s images,” quoted in Strsembski 2010 (see note 3), p. 60.
[7] In the photographs of the Vorgartenausstellung, Polke‘s Doppelportrait Fabiola (Double Portrait of Fabiola, 1964) and Ohne Titel (Hering)/Fischbrötchen (Untitled (Herring)/Fish Sandwich, 1963, the original version has a waiter playing the violin) can also be identified with certainty (ZADIK, A5, VIII, 108, 20), while two further works lying on the floor can be identified as possible works by Polke (ZADIK, A5, VIII, 108, 19).

© for the reproduced works by: Manfred Kuttner © Archiv Kuttner, Erkrath; Konrad Lueg © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Sigmar Polke © The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Cologne/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Gerhard Richter © Gerhard Richter 2022