Polke Post 8 - Ksenija Tschetschick-Hammerl, Polke, Stones, and Meteorite

Starting in the beginning of the 1980s, Sigmar Polke increasingly turned to abstract painting, which he created essentially through more or less controlled experiments with colorants and other chemicals. His deep interest in geological processes and in the formation and character of various minerals seems to have played an important role for this change in the painter's artistic work. Minerals and their artistic transformations were one of the main themes of Sigmar Polke's presentation at the 42nd Biennale di Venezia in 1986, for which the artist was awarded the Golden Lion. Polke also integrated eight pictures with gracefully winding loop lines, which he took over from Albrecht Dürer's woodcut Der Große Triumphwagen Kaiser Maximilians I. (The Large Triumphal Carriage of Emperor Maximilian I.) and enlarged, in his alchemistically influenced solo show at the historically tainted German Pavilion (during the Third Reich, the pavilion was remodelled to manifest the principles of Nazi aesthetics). One wonders what role these Dürer quotations played in Polke's alchemical spectacle in Venice. Are the abstract lineaments, like the minerals and other substances, also involved in transformational processes? To address this question, it is worthwhile to first take a closer look at the history and function of minerals in Polke's Biennale contribution.

­From the very beginning, the meteorite and the rock crystal were central to Polke's conception of his Biennale contribution. In January 1986 the artist visited Venice, having been invited shortly beforehand by the then commissioner of the German Pavilion, Dierk Stemmler, to develop a solo presentation. With his film camera, the artist recorded what he saw during his visit and documented the pavilion's empty state. As early as 20 February of the same year, Dierk Stemmler had asked the Ruhrlandmuseum Essen whether the museum had a meteorite and a rock crystal in its extensive collection. Geologist Ulrike Stottrop provided him with information about the objects in question in the collection. On 3 June 1986, Sigmar Polke visited the museum in Essen himself and was guided through the collection by the young curator. Many years later, Ulrike Stottrop recalled Polke's visit in detail[1]. Among other things, she noted that at the time she was struck by the artist's scientific knowledge. "I got to know him as a very serious, very interested person, [...]", said the geologist regarding her impressions of the artist. Aside from the meteorite and the rock crystal, Polke also viewed specimens of malachite, azurite, realgar, and orpiment in Essen. In particular, Stottrop discussed the transformability of these minerals with him. Realgar decomposes into orpiment and green malachite is a weathering product of blue azurite. In the Venetian presentation, the artist also made room for these minerals. In this case, however, he did not exhibit them as three-dimensional natural formations but applied them as colour pigments on four large-format, rectangular canvases for each mineral. He had the four monochrome paintings in green, blue, yellow and red-orange hung on the white wall of the right wing of the pavilion in a pattern that resembles a chessboard. It becomes clear that Sigmar Polke by no means viewed his contribution to the Biennale as a solo show. Rather, he staged his exhibition as a collaboration with the creative power of nature, which is represented by natural objects such as meteorite and rock crystal as well as by the manifold transformation processes of mineral substances. 

But in Venice, Polke did not want to glorify the creative bond between human beings and nature. The artist’s original plan was to show a block of uranium glass. Uranium glass is light to dark green in colour and is created by adding uranium oxide to ordinary glass. Polke's preliminary exhibition concept is recorded in the publication that appeared before the opening of the Biennale, but the artist changed it many times during the installation of his presentation[2]. For example, the meteorite was originally intended to be placed in the left wing of the pavilion. Polke intended to position the uranium glass, which was to be made in Venetian glass workshops expressly for this purpose, in the central room. According to Stemmler, Polke wanted to refer to the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on 26 April 1986[3]. Shortly before the opening, however, the artist decided to show another unprocessed mineral instead of the uranium glass. In a niche in the pavilion wall next to the conch, chiselled by Dierk Stemmler, Polke placed a cinnabar specimen. The red mineral is a compound of mercury and sulphur, which are among the basic materials of alchemy. With its title, Athanor, Polke's installation in Venice is explicitly devoted to the medieval theory of transmutation. In alchemy, an athanor is a furnace in which transformation processes of substances are induced by heating. When heated, however, cinnabar can become a deadly poison. Enclosed in a glass capsule and resting in a wall niche, the piece of cinnabar in Polke's exhibition referred to the potential dangers that can arise when humans intervene in nature. In the process of alchemical experimentation, the artist challenged the materials to act on their own and was ready to relinquish control. 
 
Polke's loop pictures are playing fields on which chemical reactions between different mineral substances take place[4]. The artist applied liquid dammar varnish to the white-primed, almost square canvases. He then spread graphite powder on the canvases, which created ephemeral cloud landscapes in the damp dammar, mainly by means of its own gravity. Finally, he executed the loops in brown silver oxide with a brush. Both graphite and silver are mineral substances that are used as components in artistic drawing and photographic media. In Polke's Venetian Dürer adaptations, these substances fulfilled different, if not contradictory functions. While graphite powder produced unpredictable images through its reaction with dammar, silver oxide was completely integrated into the line structure of the squiggles. Dürer's abstract lineaments, which pick up on the tradition of calligraphic ornamentation in Renaissance writing culture, can be interpreted as symbolic signs of human "imaginative movements"[5]. In the giant woodcut, the abstract, free-floating loops contrast with the small-scale details in the depiction of the Triumphal Carriage and seem above all to embody the artist's creative will and autonomy. By putting the Dürer squiggles in the context of the random pictorial activity of the graphite, Polke showcased the balance between the artist's will and the material's own activity. A rare equilibrium.

Text by Ksenija Tschetschick-Hammerl

[1] Ulrike Stottrop, Polke's Questions to a Geologist, lecture and discussion on 31 May 2015, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (in the context of the exhibition "SIGMAR POLKE Annäherungen an Venedig – Filme und Trabanten der Biennale 1986" (SIGMAR POLKE Approaches to Venice – Films and Byproducts of the 1986 Biennale), Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 15 March – 5 July 2015). I would like to thank the Anna Polke Foundation for the opportunity to watch the video recording of the lecture, © Archive Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach.
[2] Sigmar Polke. Athanor. Il Padiglione. XLII. Biennale di Venezia 1986, edited by Dierk Stemmler, Düsseldorf 1986.
[3] Dierk Stemmler and Rita Blumenthal in an interview with Anna Polke (2010). I would like to thank the Anna Polke Foundation for the opportunity to view the video recording of the interview.
[4] I would also like to thank Michael Trier very much for his detailed and patient explanations regarding the creation and technique of the loop pictures.
[5] Horst Bredekamp: "Das Prinzip der Metamorphosen und die Theorie der Evolution", in: Jahrbuch 2008. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 2009, pp. 209–247, here: 214.