{"id":34,"date":"2019-01-17T08:32:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T07:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/00_clients\/303_anna_polke_stiftung\/?page_id=34"},"modified":"2026-03-12T16:16:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T15:16:38","slug":"scholarship","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/scholarship\/","title":{"rendered":"Scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Anna Polke Foundation awards two scholarships of \u20ac5,000 each every year. They are announced here at the beginning of each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call for Applications<\/strong><\/a>
The 2026 call is now open. Apply now!
Project proposals on Sigmar Polke, with a special focus on\u00a0Sigmar Polke. Athanor NOW<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and especially his Biennale photographs can be submitted until May 1, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIPS 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Des. Kathrin Borgers, Sigmar Polke in the Context of Pre-Modern Pictorial Concepts<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

Sigmar Polke\u2019s strong historical awareness of the conceptualization of artistic practice is reflected in many of his works. For example, he references pre-modern art-theoretical themes and playfully integrates them into his materials, his selection of motifs, and his technical composition. This corresponds to Polke\u2019s guiding principle that in art there is no\u00a0creatio ex nihilo<\/em>\u00a0it rather always is based on what already exists. Particularly relevant here is his work exploring material transformations, such as the\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0installation in the German Pavilion at the XLII Venice Biennale in 1986, where he focused on traditional pigments (orpiment, realgar, malachite, azurite, cinnabar, tyrian purple). Clear references can be seen in the adoption of medieval and early modern iconography. Concepts such as\u00a0natura naturans<\/em>,\u00a0alter deus<\/em>, the distinction between artistic hierarchies, artistic self-reflection, and Hermetic theories can also be found in his work.When this principle is addressed in research on Polke, it is rarely linked back to specific pre-modern concepts. Recognizable motifs such as hares,\u00a0D\u00fcrerschleifen<\/em>\u00a0(D\u00fcrer loops), illuminations from the\u00a0Aelfric Paraphrase<\/em>, or images from a floor mosaic in Siena Cathedral have already served as starting points for reflections on Polke\u2019s historical references. These explorations focused on reproduction and duplication in particular, as demonstrated by the artist\u2019s raster technique and choice of image support. Hans Belting describes Polke\u2019s recourse to older art history as \u201cnegative theology,\u201d in which painting \u201cwithdraws into its past and just as effortlessly designs its future,\u201d thus opening up new freedoms.[1]<\/sup><\/a>In my research, I intend to explore this approach beyond well-known visual references, focusing on Polke\u2019s techniques, materials, and pictorial concepts through the following questions: How does Polke incorporate pre-modern theories, images, and materials into his artworks? What sources provide evidence of his engagement with pre-modern art (literature, interviews, the works themselves)? How does Polke update these references and place them in dialogue with contemporary topics?The central creative principles of Polke\u2019s work grapple with fundamental questions about the meaning of art. As part of this, he appears to engage with and update pre-modern art-theoretical ideas. Particularly striking in this regard is the relationship between art and nature, which is evident in his use of materials as an expression of nature in action (natura naturans<\/em>). The paintings in the\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0exhibition created using mineral pigments responded to environmental influences, allowing the images to evolve as part of a process. Something similar could be seen with the hydrosensitive murals, in which a cobalt chloride solution reacted to the lagoon climate and rendered natural processes visible. These techniques are reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s\u00a0Trattato della pittura\u00a0<\/em>(A Treatise on Painting), in which marks on the wall or clouds can serve as sources of inspiration.[2]<\/sup><\/a>Polke\u2019s understanding of nature as active is part of a tradition that explores questions of inspiration, imagination, and mimesis. This connection to\u00a0natura naturans<\/em>\u00a0and the readymade can also be seen in the integration of natural objects (gold nuggets, crystals, meteorites, pieces of cinnabar, agate slices). The balance between artistic design and a material-driven process also alludes to the debate surrounding artistic genius\u2014and ironically challenges it. For example, when Polke copies D\u00fcrer\u2019s lines in the\u00a0D\u00fcrerschleifen<\/em>, he undermines the idea of genius by reducing it to a copy. The addition of graphite and silver oxide also creates processes that enable images to emerge independently of the artist. Any possible reference to the brilliant lines of Apelles and Protogenes remains as implicit as the idea of pure imagination, thought to be expressed by D\u00fcrer\u2019s lines..The early modern question of divine inspiration in the sense of\u00a0alter deus<\/em>\u00a0is ironically subverted in Polke\u2019s work\u2014in hisH\u00f6here Wesen<\/em>\u00a0(Higher Beings), for example, or his\u00a0Kartoffelhaus<\/em>\u00a0(Potato House).[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0This theme is also evident in the windows of Zurich\u2019s Grossm\u00fcnster: Polke uses his signature to draw a distinction between the creative design and its technical execution, thus echoing the pre-modern discourse about the hierarchical classification of the fine arts. This distinction is ironically exaggerated by a second, hidden signature in the \u201cP\u201d of the Elijah window.This project will examine these and similar references by Polke to pre-modern pictorial concepts in order to highlight the interplay between his artistic practices and the theoretical foundations of the pre-modern era. The focus will be on Polke\u2019s use of traditional materials and iconographies, as well as art-theoretical concepts and how they are updated to fit contemporary topics.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Hans Belting, \u201c\u00dcber L\u00fcgen und andere Wahrheiten der Malerei: Einige Gedanken f\u00fcr S.P.,\u201d in\u00a0Sigmar Polke\u2014die drei L\u00fcgen der Malerei<\/em>,\u00a0ed. Martin Hentschel, exh. cat. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn (1997<\/a>), pp. 129\u2013144.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Leonardo da Vinci, A Treatise on Painting, trans. John Francis Rigaud (London, 1802), p. 84.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Friedrich Wolfram Heubach, \u201cSigmar Polke\u2014Fr\u00fche Einfl\u00fcsse, sp\u00e4te Folgen oder: Wie kamen die Affen in mein Schaffen? und andere ikono-biographische Fragen,\u201d in\u00a0Sigmar Polke\u2014die drei L\u00fcgen der Malerei<\/em>, ed. Martin Hentschel, exh. cat. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn (1997), pp. 285\u2013295, here p. 293.Kathrin Borgers<\/strong> is a research assistant at the Department of Art and Art History at TU Dortmund University. After studying art history, she completed her doctorate in 2022 on creative, technical, and art-theoretical aspects of monstrous figures in fifteenth-century panel paintings at the University of Cologne. She is currently working a postdoctoral project on early modern sculptural works made from \u201clow value\u201d materials. Her research interests include art technology, the history of science, art theory, and material iconography.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Francesca Valentini, PHD, The Alchemy of Representation: Sigmar Polke in Venice<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

The Alchemy of Representation: Sigmar Polke in Venice<\/em>\u00a0explores the artist\u2019s enduring relationship with the Venice Biennale, focusing especially on\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0(1986), a site-specific installation that Polke created for the German Pavilion at the 42nd Biennale di Venezia. The project aims to catalog and contextualize Polke\u2019s presence in Venice as well as to assess how\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0reflects and refracts the concept of\u00a0national representation<\/em>\u00a0across time \u2014 from the divided Germany of the 1980s to contemporary critiques, such as Maria Eichhorn\u2019s\u00a0Relocating a Structure<\/em>\u00a0(2022).Polke\u2019s participation at the Biennale was frequent and significant. He debuted in 1980 with\u00a0Kartoffelhaus\u00a0<\/em>(1967),\u00a0Grattacielo<\/em>(1968), and\u00a0Incontro telepatico<\/em>\u00a0(1968), and returned in 1986 as the official representative of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was in this pivotal year that he unveiled\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a constellation of works named after the alchemical furnace, symbolizing transformation and long-burning experimentation. Positioned within the stern neoclassical structure of the German Pavilion (built in 1938 under Nazi rule),\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0took on potent political and spatial significance. One work,\u00a0Polizeischwein<\/em>\u00a0(1986), greeted visitors outside, provocatively displayed next to the freshly added inscription\u00a0Bundesrepublik Deutschland<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a detail charged with Cold War resonance, as both East and West Germany were then exhibiting separately at the Biennale.Despite fully activating the pavilion with his ambitious installation, Polke was not awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion. Instead, he received one of the two Golden Lions for Best Artist. This decision by the jury could be interpretated as a subtly reframing of Polke\u2019s work: less as a national statement and more as an individual act of transformation.His connection with Venice continued well beyond 1986. In 1993, Polke presented three monumental canvases as part of\u00a0Araldico<\/em>, alongside Buren, Clemente, and Twombly. He returned again in 1999, 2003, and in 2007 with the remarkable\u00a0Axial Age<\/em>\u00a0series \u2014 seven vast canvases installed in the luminous main hall of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 2011, at the 54. Venice Biennale, artistic director Bice Curiger \u2014 a long-time admirer of Polke \u2014 dedicated a full room to the artist, in the international show at Giardini. She chose five works from 2007 and notably,\u00a0Polizeischwein<\/em>\u00a0from 1986, linking back to\u00a0Athanor\u00a0<\/em>and emphasizing the continuity of Polke\u2019s themes: national identity, irony, and transformation. Curiger\u2019s exhibition,\u00a0ILLUMInations<\/em>, explicitly questioned the relevance of national pavilions and invited viewers to consider artists as sources of both intellectual and spiritual light \u2014 making her selection of\u00a0Polizeischwein<\/em>\u00a0all the more poignant.In a 1984 interview between Curiger and Polke, the two exchanged wry, ironic thoughts on national identity \u2014 remarks that gain new meaning when considered alongside\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0and the specific context of the Venice Biennale.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0From Cold War divides to today\u2019s debates on post-nationalism, Polke\u2019s interventions resonate as both historically grounded and prophetically relevant.The Anna Polke Stiftung scholarship provides me a meaninful opportunity to deepen and expand my research in multifaceted ways. It enables me to carry out extensive archival work at the ASAC \u2013 the Historical Archives of Contemporary Art of the Venice Biennale \u2013 with a particular focus on Polke\u2019s multiple participations, and most notably his 1986 contribution,\u00a0Athanor<\/em>. I will also gain access to the Anna Polke Foundation\u2019s archives, including materials directly related to\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0as well as broader documentation of Polke\u2019s involvement with the Venice Biennale over the years.Drawing on my long-standing involvement with the Biennale, both as an art mediator and a researcher, I intend to contextualize the archival research within the wider history of the Venetian institution, the evolving debates around the concept of national representation and the (historical) relevance of national pavillions. My research will culminate in a critical essay reflecting on the ongoing significance of\u00a0Athanor<\/em>, and how it continues to resonate in contemporary discussions surrounding identity, nationhood, and artistic agency. In parallel, I plan to produce a podcast to bring this research to a wider audience, translating complex ideas into accessible and compelling storytelling. In doing so, I hope to not only share Polke\u2019s legacy with a broader public but also to spark dialogue about how art, across time, can illuminate \u2014 and challenge \u2014 the structures that shape our collective understanding of the world.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u201cEin Bild ist an sich schon eine Gemeinheit: Bice Curiger im Gespr\u00e4ch mit Sigmar Polke,\u201d\u00a0Parkett<\/em>, no. 26 (1990): 6-16, 11-12; (first published in\u00a0Art Press<\/em>, no. 91, Avril 1985).Francesca Valentini <\/strong>is a modern and contemporary art historian and critic. She teaches the History of Photography at Ecole Sup\u00e9rieure des Arts de l\u2019Image LE 75 in Brussels where she also supervises academic quality and sustainability. Her reseach interests focus on artist\u2019s publications, the history and socio-political relevance of international exhibitions (with a focus on the Venice Biennale), and art education. Her forthcoming book\u00a0Art Book, Artist\u2019s Book, Exhibition Catalogue is in perparation<\/em>\u00a0(Cologne: K\u00f6nig).\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nico Joana Weber, Dirk, Any Ideas?<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

As part of the scholarship, I plan to conduct comprehensive research into the productive (working) relationship between Sigmar Polke and my father Dirk Weber, who supplied Polke with painting materials and adviced him for decades. The aim is to create a collection of materials that will include photographs, documents, material samples, and notes from conversations.Dirk Weber was born in Sendenhorst in 1947 and moved to Bonn in 1970, where he launched his company, Dirk Weber Feines K\u00fcnstlermaterial, in 1979. From the very beginning, his goal has been to provide professional artists with high-quality products sourced from all over the world after years of exhaustive research, or even to produce them himself where necessary. Close communication, personalized consultation and services as well as site-specific work and solutions complete Dirk Weber\u2019s portfolio and make his approach truly unique. Many artists trust his knowledge and precise work and keep coming back to him. Although Weber is approaching eighty, he has no intention of calling it a day\u2014the demand for his work and his investment in his work is too great.Dirk Weber met Sigmar Polke in 1981. It was the beginning of an intense relationship and friendship. Polke gifted Weber paintings he had dedicated to him, celebrated with him at openings, and immersed himself in the (Rhineland) art scene of the 1980s. Over the years, Weber advised Polke about materials and visited him regularly in his studio. \u201cDirk, any ideas?\u201d was a question often put to him, which always prompted Weber to look out for new, interesting materials for Polke, in turn inspiring his works. He supplied him with the interference colors used in the\u00a0Magische Quadrate<\/em>\u00a0(Magical Squares) cycle, special synthetic pigments used to color the lacquers in the\u00a0Laterna Magica<\/em>\u00a0series, for example, and canvases that were specially designed and produced for the\u00a0Athanor<\/em>\u00a0exhibition in Venice. Weber also supports Polke with his expertise in working with natural pigments and minerals. He procured high-quality malachite and azurite pigments for the artist, and Sigmar Polke inspired him to produce lapis lazuli pigment of an unprecedented quality, which Polke then used in the 1992 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, for instance. The four-part image cycle\u00a0Zinnober<\/em>\u00a0(Cinnabar, 2005) was also based on cinnabar pigment found by Dirk Weber in Beijing; it was of such exceptional intensity that Weber himself says he has never been able to obtain anything like it again since, and it was this distinctive quality that inspired Sigmar Polke to create his paintings.The aim of my project is to investigate these and other details relating to the materials and production aspects of Sigmar Polke\u2019s work and to make them available to the Anna Polke Foundation archive so that they are accessible for future research. The resulting material collection links back to Sigmar Polke\u2019s Venice exhibition and the related materialities highlighted by the research and education project\u00a0Sigmar Polke: Athanor NOW<\/em>. At the same time, it also sheds light on an important work that takes place in the background and influences as well as inspires artistic production. Art is not created in a vacuum; it thrives on diverse stimul, and I plan to trace this process in the long-standing collaboration between Sigmar Polke and Dirk Weber.\u00a0The artist Nico Joana Weber <\/strong>uses artistic research methods to explore processes of transformation and appropriation, as well as the visualization of hidden narratives. She studied Fine Art and Art History at Goldsmiths College, London and completed her postgraduate studies at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. Weber has presented her work in numerous international exhibitions and screenings and has been awarded various prizes, including the Villa Romana Prize and the Bonn Art Prize, as well as scholarships and residencies.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIPS 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G\u00f6kcan Demirkazik, Photographic Mythologies: Sigmar Polke\u2019s Counter-Anthropological Gaze<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

My dissertation investigates\u00a0why\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0how<\/em>\u00a0Sigmar Polke\u2019s preoccupation with material experimentation emerges out of his\u00a0encounters<\/em>\u00a0with the world, especially with the communities and cultures of the broadly defined, notional Other. In a similar vein, it seeks to make sense of the resulting artistic processes in the charged context of a divided Germany: Cold War hostilities and solidarities, the influx of millions of\u00a0Gastarbeiter<\/em>, the contested collective memory of German colonialism and the Holocaust (or wholesale lack thereof) render encounters with Otherness\u2014both physical and ideological\u2014inescapable for subjectivity formation. Put differently, what does it mean to insist on material entropy, malleability of authorial gestures, and the reclamation of various\u2014archaic or poisonous\u2014forms of chromatic experience in an era of ossified political fixities and ravenous capitalist extraction and\/or displacement of materials, resources, and populations?The research project \u201cPhotographic Mythologies: Sigmar Polke\u2019s Counter-Anthropological Gaze,\u201d addresses a set of issues at the heart of my dissertation, revolving around the artist\u2019s growing interest and engagement with non-European cultures, as well as anthropology. Indeed, as others have suggested, the artist\u2019s concern with Otherness dates further back to the 1960s. During this period, it is possible to speak of a generic but somehow often fantastical iconography of Otherness, best exemplified by Polke periodic redeployment and reinvention of the palm tree as a mockingly exoticizing motif. However, even at this early moment, he demonstrates an affinity for critiquing epistemological structures that manufacture and propagate myths of difference through his own ostentatiously pseudo-scientific, diagrammatic travails;\u00a0Menschenkreis<\/em>\u00a0(Fotokreis) I<\/em>, 1968, and\u00a0Pappologie<\/em>, 1968\u201369, are among such works. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that Polke befriends\u2014like several other Rhineland-based artists including Lothar Baumgarten and Candida H\u00f6fer\u2014the anthropologist and filmmaker Michael Oppitz in the 1970s, becoming a node in a network of artists interested in (pseudo-)anthropological approaches to the cultural Other and addressing histories of colonialism, tourism, and mass migration. As the list of Oppitz\u2019s publications suggests, this moment is also a moment of deep self-introspection for the discipline of anthropology, which slowly begins to come to terms with its colonial, extractionist foundations and re-imagine its methods. And yet, if the anthropologist\u2019s task is to make sense of an Other\u2019s material and immaterial cultural forms, Polke and his travels fail miserably at shedding light on the specificities of world views, belief systems, and societal structures near and far. Particularly with his experiments in the dark room and pigment-based interventions, photography is forced to relinquish its documentary status and has to make space for flights of fancy. In the end, Polke leaves us with anti-documents that refuse to instrumentalize worldly encounters and Otherness\u2014ones that make a travesty of their own alleged transparency and ability to \u201crepresent.\u201d\u00a0G\u00f6kcan Demirkaz\u0131<\/strong>k <\/strong>is an art historian, critic, and curator based in Los Angeles, where he is currently a PhD Candidate in art history at the University of California, Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/em>Prior to graduate school, he helped establish a center for contemporary art at the former Bomonti Beer Factory (now Yapi Kredi bomontiada) in Istanbul and worked as an assistant programmer at SALT (Istanbul). A SAHA Foundation-supported alumnus of Ashkal Alwan\u2019s Home Workspace Program (Beirut), Demirkaz\u0131k is the recipient of fellowships at LACMA\u2019s Modern Art department and the Jan van Ecyk Academie (Maastricht). His writing has appeared in\u00a0ArtAsiaPacific<\/em>,\u00a0Artforum<\/em>,\u00a0Art Review<\/em>,\u00a0Art Unlimited<\/em>,\u00a0di\u2019van | A Journal of Accounts<\/em>,\u00a0Even<\/em>,\u00a0Frieze<\/em>,\u00a0m-est.org\u00a0<\/em>and LACMA\u2019s\u00a0Unframed<\/em>.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Joanna Nencek, Unfolding the Photographic Echo in Images and Objects<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

I still remember my first encounters with Sigmar Polke\u2019s works. It was easy to connect with them because they reflected the artist\u2019s humor and our shared interest in rendering our handling of the material visible. These aspects will also play a greater role in my own artistic work in the future. The scholarship from the Anna Polke Foundation enables me to give experimentation and chance\u2014which are vital to this kind of work\u2014the space they deserve.\u00a0Like Sigmar Polke, I represent an expanded understanding of photography as a medium. My primary focus is on the inextricable interplay between recognition and abstraction in images and objects. Using various digital and analog processes, I transform two-dimensional images into spatial constructions. My motifs are based on abandoned and useless objects: I am interested in anything from discarded bowls, candlesticks, cookie jars, and containers of all kinds to windows, doors, and glass shower panes, mostly of a decorative nature.\u00a0My first step is to appropriate these everyday objects\u2014found online in the \u201cFree\u201d section of a classified advertisements website\u2014in the form of screenshots of their accompanying photographs. These images, usually taken quickly on a smartphone, are converted into negatives and then printed onto paper or fabric using cyanotype, an analog monochrome printing process. In order to achieve the desired degree of abstraction, I then make interventions such as manipulating the negatives or tinting the image carrier. The next step in my treatment of these advertised objects is to actually go and collect them from the people offering them and to make photograms of them. The last thing I created using this method were some large-format color photograms of glass doors.\u00a0With this scholarship, I would like to continue to develop my approach of combining photography and sculpture in my work. Collecting large quantities of waste photographic paper from the photo lab at my university has allowed me to experiment extensively with the stability of this material. This has resulted in 80 cm long rolls of photo paper with a diameter of 2.5 cm becoming the basic components of my sculptural constructions. With the help of various pipe connectors, I assemble these rolls into scaffold-like structures resembling shelves or cupboards. The surface of the rolls demonstrates that they were once light-sensitive, now fully developed photographic paper\u2014color gradients produced in the darkroom, analog grain, and white spots caused by dust on the negatives are all clear markers that the material is of photographic origin.\u00a0A tension emerges between the defamiliarized reproduction of the objects and the familiarlook and feel of their form, material, and dimensions. These industrially manufactured mass products, the starting point of my work, become handmade unique pieces\u2014a status that reflects the original nature of these items. The results of this artistic project will form the basis of my graduation project and will be presented in an exhibition next year.With an artistic practice situated at the margins of photography, Joanna Nencek<\/strong> prefers to work without a camera. Born in Krakow, she has lived in Germany since the age of fourteen and initially worked in the social sector. She studied photography and time-based media at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, where she is currently completing her master\u2019s degree in the Photography Studies and Practice program. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at institutions including the Museum Folkwang, Essen; the Kunstpalast, D\u00fcsseldorf; and the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, D\u00fcsseldorf.\"\"<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mona Schubert, Queering Visions? Sigmar Polke\u2019s Photo Series\u00a0S\u00e3o Paulo\u00a0(1975)<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

During the 13th Bienal de S\u00e3o Paulo (1975), Sigmar Polke accompanied the artist Blinky Palermo and Evelyn Weiss, who curated the West German contributions to the exhibition, on a walk through the city. During this stroll, he produced the photo series\u00a0S\u00e3o Paulo<\/em>, which focuses on visitors to a gay bar in the Brazilian metropolis. A closer look at these spontaneous snapshots raises the question of whether photographing this queer community in a foreign cultural context could be interpreted as being an act of resistance, voyeurism, or even as having colonial undertones. After all, the LGBTQIA+ scene in the country, which was under a military dictatorship at the time, was unable to present itself so freely in public and needed these safe spaces.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0While\u00a0Athanor,<\/em>\u00a0Polke\u2019s photographic contribution to the Venice Biennale (1986), has been much discussed,[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0this photo series created on the sidelines of the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial has yet to be analyzed. My research project addresses this shortcoming by not only situating this ambivalent series in a (photo-)historical context, but also by examining it from various theoretical perspectives.Applying an intersectional approach, it should first be noted that photographing queer people from the Global South through the lense of a heterosexual, cis male, Western gaze carries the danger of objectifying this community by portraying it as \u201cother\u201d. Susanne Huber moves away from this essentialist perspective and argues that a queer art work does not necessarily require a queer authorship, and that queer artists can also perpetuate hegemonic social systems.[3]<\/sup><\/a>The aim, therefore, is to clarify Polke\u2019s position within the West German photography scene of the 1970s, which was increasingly concerned with gender identities, binary gender roles and sexual orientation.[4]<\/sup><\/a>My analysis also draws on approaches from postcolonial photographic theory in order to reflect on Polke\u2019s position as a highly successful European artist, unaffected by censorship, who is infiltrating a non-Western culture, documenting it and marketing it as a work of art. Nicholas Mirzoeff\u2019s volume\u00a0The Right to Look<\/em>\u00a0(2012), which reflects on the subversive potential of visual relationships, offers a different perspective:The right to look is not about seeing. It begins at a personal level with the look into someone else\u2019s eyes to express friendship, solidarity, or love. That look must be mutual, each person inventing the other, or it fails. As such, it is unrepresentable. The right to look claims autonomy, not individualism or voyeurism, but the claim to a political subjectivity and collectivity.[5]<\/sup><\/a>The project will also draw comparisons with other photographic works by Polke, such as those taken in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which echo the historical Orientalist photography of the nineteenth century.[6]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0While they illustrate an intercultural debate that goes beyond sexual orientation, the problematic Western exoticization of the \u201cOrient\u201d or the \u201cother\u201d depicted in these photographs also allows connections to be established with Brazil. Ethical issues relating to street photography will also be discussed, such as the balancing act between artistic freedom and the right to privacy of those being photographed,[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0which is also raised by Polke\u2019s photographs of homeless people sleeping in New York City.The historical and theoretical discourses on photography outlined here will be combined with a material-based approach that, as Franziska Kunze argues, closely scrutinizes the opacity of the photographs as an artistic strategy.[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0What is the significance of Polke\u2019s subsequent chemical manipulations of the delicate photographic material? Are they to be understood as part of the content, as an intersecting or even protective image layer? Or are they a product of the debates surrounding the medium in the 1970s, which broke away from Greenberg\u2019s doctrine[9]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0that a photographic image should be as faithful and undistorted as possible? In order to answer these questions, I will compare the negatives with the material composition of the finished works, thus revealing the shift from snapshot to artistic intervention.[10]<\/sup><\/a>This preliminary contextualization of the photo series\u00a0S\u00e3o Paulo\u00a0<\/em>illustrates the potential pitfalls of photographing queer communities in foreign cultures. However, an analysis grounded in queer feminist and postcolonial approaches allows us to better grasp the complexity and reception of the series. A site-specific and material-based analysis of the photographic images opens up a further dimension of this analysis by placing Polke\u2019s artistic strategies and technical decisions in the context of his time while simultaneously setting them apart from it.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For more information see James N. Green, \u201c\u2018Who Is the Macho Who Wants to Kill Me?\u2019 Male Homosexuality, Revolutionary Masculinity, and the Brazilian Armed Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s,\u201d\u00a0Hispanic American Historical Review<\/em>, vol. 92, no. 3, pp. 437\u2013469.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0See, among others, Franziska Kunze, \u201cSigmar Polkes Materialisierungsstrategien von Vergangenheitsphantasmen,\u201d in\u00a0Reader: Produktive Bildst\u00f6rung; Sigmar Polke und aktuelle Perspektiven<\/em>, ed. Anna Polke-Stiftung (Berlin: Distanz Verlag, 2023), pp. 163\u2013172; Max Wechsler, \u201cSigmar Polke: West German Pavilion, Biennale,\u201d\u00a0Artforum<\/em>, vol. 25, no. 2 (October 1986), p. 142.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Susanne Huber, \u201cAct and Position,\u201d\u00a0Snaps from a Queer Angle, Still Searching\u2026,<\/em>\u00a0Fotomuseum Winterthur blog, August 21, 2020,\u00a0https:\/\/www.fotomuseum.ch\/de\/2020\/08\/21\/act-and-position\/<\/a>, all links were last accessed on June 6, 2024.[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The recent group exhibition\u00a0Stereo_Typen<\/em>\u00a0at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn in 2019 took a closer look at this topic and also featured Polke\u2019s photo series\u00a0Weihnachten bei Polke<\/em>\u00a0(1973).\u00a0See Peter Backof, \u201cDie Ausstellung \u2018Stereo_Typen\u2019: \u00dcberwindung des Geschlechts,\u201d\u00a0Deutschlandfunk<\/em>, March 25, 2019,\u00a0https:\/\/www.deutschlandfunk.de\/die-ausstellung-stereo-typen-ueberwindung-des-geschlechts-100.html<\/a>.[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nicholas Mirzoeff, \u201cThe Right to Look, or, How to Think With and Against Visuality,\u201d in\u00a0The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality<\/em>(London: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 1\u201334: 1.[6]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For more information see Silke Lemmes and Nina Weimer, eds.,\u00a0Sigmar Polke: Road trip through the Middle East; Pictorial Photography from Afghanistan and Pakistan<\/em>, exh. cat.\u00a0Sies + H\u00f6ke (D\u00fcsseldorf, 2020).[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lorenz M\u00fcller-Tamm,\u00a0Street Photography und Pers\u00f6nlichkeitsrecht<\/em>\u00a0(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2023) [=\u00a0Bild und Recht\u2014Studien zur Regulierung des Visuellen<\/em>, vol. 12].[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Franziska Kunze,\u00a0Opake Fotografien: Das Sichtbarmachen fotografischer Materialit\u00e4t als k\u00fcnstlerische Strategie<\/em>\u00a0(Reimer: Berlin, 2019).[9]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Clement Greenberg, \u201cDas Glasauge der Kamera\u201d [\u201cThe Camera\u2019s Glass Eye,\u201d 1946], and \u201cVier Fotografen\u201d [\u201cFour Photographs,\u201d 1964], in\u00a0Essenz der Moderne: Ausgew\u00e4hlte Essays und Kritiken,\u00a0<\/em>ed. Greenberg (Amsterdam and Dresden: Verlag der Kunst G+B Fine Arts, 1997), pp. 107\u2013113, 336\u2013343.[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0For more information see Lilian Haberer, \u201cRe-Produktion, Sigmar Polkes Materialinterventionen als \u00e4sthetische, gesellschaftliche Praktiken,\u201d in\u00a0Reader: Produktive Bildst\u00f6rung; Sigmar Polke und aktuelle Perspektiven,\u00a0<\/em>ed.\u00a0<\/em>Anna Polke-Stiftung (Berlin: Distanz Verlag, 2023), pp. 13\u201320. Haberer refers to Polke\u2018s deconstruction of \u201csocial assertions and representations\u201d on a material or procedural level.Mona Schubert<\/strong> is an art historian and freelance curator. She is currently completing her PhD on photography at documenta at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School in Cologne. She was previously a research associate for the FWF project \u201cBildtechniken der Ko-Produktion\u201d (Co-Operative Art Techniques) at the University of Graz and assistant curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur. Her research interests include photography at the interface between the history of art, technology, and media, photographic exhibitions as well as (post-)digital image practices.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIPS 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dr. Anja isabel schneider, Cosmic (Dis)order: Sigmar Polke and the Circus<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

\u201cGerade das, was der Zirkus ist, steht aber nicht fest.\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a>Due to its indeterminacy and utopic, revolutionary potentialities, the circus has been of great appeal throughout the history to artists, filmmakers, and writers. The circus, too, features in the work of Sigmar Polke.\u00a0In exploring the motif of the circus in Polke\u2019s oeuvre, we can draw a line from his early\u00a0Rasterbilder,\u00a0such as\u00a0Zirkus\u00a0<\/em>(Circus), 1966, to his later works, including\u00a0Zirkusfiguren\u00a0<\/em>(Circus Figures), 2005. This research project is aimed at contributing to an analysis of Sigmar Polke and the circus\u2014with an outlook that is both dialogic and transdisciplinary.Starting from Polke\u2019s multi-faceted artistic approaches that address the circus or elements thereof in works such as\u00a0Messerwerfer\u00a0<\/em>(Knife Thrower), 1975\u2014in addition to exploring the circus as potential metaphor for Polke\u2019s artistic stance\u2014the theme of the circus proves fruitful in pointing out dialogic moments that engage with Polke\u2019s legacy. This means not only focusing on Polke\u2019s works, but also bringing in other voices, past and present, across different media. One such voice is that of author and filmmaker Alexander Kluge. Kluge, whose fascination with the circus gave rise to various films, literary texts, and exhibition projects, focuses on such relationality. This takes the form of multifarious dialogues. \u201cMy moon,\u201d as Kluge poignantly notes, \u201cdoes not shine if not illuminated by other constellations.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Polke\u2019s work, I posit, is endowed with such illuminating faculty.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The theme of the circus points to different thematic undercurrents in Sigmar Polke\u2019s oeuvre. To be sure, Polke\u2019s engagement with the circus not only forges links to social, economic, and political contexts, critically admonishing the political vice of utopian dreams in the realm of air, it also designates an alternate space that is both marginal and liminal. Its epitome figure, I venture, is the tightrope walker[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0and \u201cother high-flying acrobats\u201d: their risky, \u201cdeath-defying leaps are the most extreme a body can produce, but it does bring them off.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0If the utopian element of the circus is underlined by thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, or Siegfried Kracauer, who ascribe utopian potential to the circus to reverse conventional world orders,[6]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to suspend rules, constraints, and restrictions that govern our reality, albeit only temporarily, we are to ask: What other space(s) is\/are delineated and alluded to under the big top (and other circus spaces) in the here selected works?\u00a0Exploring new inroads into Sigmar Polke\u2019s artistic production,\u00a0what solidarities, forms of cooperation and resistance come to the fore with respect to contemporary circus research and practice?[7]<\/sup><\/a>Featuring several hallmarks of Polke's work, a street photograph, hand painted in dots and a patterned fabric, form the backdrop to Zirkusfiguren<\/em> (Circus figures), 2005. Against this background, clowns, acrobats, and animals each perform a balancing act. Polke juxtaposes Zirkusfiguren<\/em> with Die Trennung des Mondes von den einzelnen Planeten<\/em> (The separation of the moon from other planets), 2005, an abstracted rendering of the scene (mirrored\/reversed), set against a mosaic pattern. To the now schematic circus figures, Polke adds two large dices that appear in the foreground. Beyond these overt references to chance and play, the work\u2019s title Die Trennung des Mondes von den einzelnen Planeten<\/em> propels us into the cosmic realm. As in Kluge\u2019s pluriverse, cosmic motifs abound throughout Polke\u2019s work. Take for instance Polke\u2019s self-portrait as astronaut (Polke als Astronaut<\/em>, 1968). The same year, the artist expands the planetary system with a 10th<\/sup> planet \u201cPolke\u201d that he invites us to explore (Erweiterung des Planetensystems um einen 10. Planeten<\/em>, 1968). \u00a0Circling back to Die Trennung des Mondes von den <\/em>einzelnen Planeten<\/em>, a line from Angela Carter\u2019s Nights at the Circus<\/em> comes to mind. A literary exploration of cosmic interference amidst a profusion of tropes:\u201cAnd the world ended.\u00a0Or so it seemed.Some kind of cosmic disorder,some belch or hiccup in the digestive order of the Galaxy\u2026\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a>[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Alexander Kluge,\u00a0Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel<\/em>,\u00a0ratlos<\/em>\u00a0(M\u00fcnchen: Piper, 1968), p. 47.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Translated from the German: \u201cOhne von anderen Gestirnen beleuchtet zu werden, leuchtet mein Mond nicht.\u201d Alexander Kluge, in \u201cGl\u00fcckliche Umst\u00e4nde, leihweise: Alexander Kluge im Gespr\u00e4ch mit Thomas Combrink, (ed.),\u00a0Gl\u00fcckliche Umst\u00e4nde, leihweise<\/em>\u00a0(Frankfurt am Main: Suhkamp, 2008), pp. 338-339.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0See Kluge\u2019s homage to Polke\u00a0Achsenzeit Axial Age\u00a0<\/em>(Hommage an Sigmar Polke), 2021,\u00a0Productive Image Interference. Sigmar Polke and Artistic Perspectives<\/em>\u00a0Today<\/em>,\u00a0http:\/\/www.festival-anna-polke-stiftung.com<\/a>\u00a0(last accessed June 1, 2023).[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Polke has been described as a tightrope walker: \u201c[\u2026]\u00a0ein Seilt\u00e4nzer, ein richtiger Artist, ohne Netz und ohne doppelten Boden.\u201d\u00a0Bruno Brunnet, \u201cIm stillen Gedenken an Schlingelchen,\u201d\u00a0BZ-Berlin<\/em>, 13.06.2010.[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Ernst Bloch, \u201cBetter Castles in the Sky at the Country Fair and Circus, in Fairy Tales and Colportage,\u201d [1959] in\u00a0The Utopian Function of Art and Literature\u00a0<\/em>(Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1988), p. 179.[6]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0See, among others, Sigfried Kracauer, \u201cAkrobat \u2013 sch\u00f6\u00f6n\u201d in\u00a0Johanna Rosenberg (ed.)\u00a0Siegfried Kracauer, Der verbotene Blick \u2013 Beobachtungen, Analyse, Kritiken<\/em>\u00a0(Leipzig: Reclam, 1992), pp.172-185.[7]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0See, for instance,\u00a0https:\/\/www.circusanditsothers.org<\/a>\u00a0(last accessed June 3, 2023).[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Angela Carter,\u00a0Nights at the Circus<\/em>, 1984, manuscript to her magical realist novel, n. pag.\u00a0Anja Isabel Schneider<\/strong>\u00a0is a researcher, curator, and writer.\u00a0She\u00a0received an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London. From 2015-2020, she held a doctoral position in Curatorial Research at the M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp \/ LGC, KU Leuven\u00a0&UC Louvain.\u00a0She presented her research and curatorial projects at institutions, such as MG+MSUM, Modern galerija, Ljubljana (in the framework of L\u2019Internationale);\u00a0Fundaci\u00f3 Antoni T\u00e0pies,<\/em>\u00a0Barcelona; TBA21, Vienna; Palais de Tokyo, Paris;\u00a0JA.CA, Belo Horizonte; MARCO, Vigo; FRAC Lorraine; Goethe Institut\/\u00c9cole des Beaux Arts, Nancy, among others. Currently, she is\u00a0an associate researcher of the research group ARTEA, Madrid. From October to December 2023, she will be\u00a0a research fellow at the DFK Paris.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Daniel spaulding, (Ir)rationalities of Mark-Making in the Work of Sigmar Polke\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

This project is part of a larger study of the interaction between capitalist rationalization and mimetic practices over the past century. My basic research question is extremely simple: \u201cIs art-making a rational enterprise?\u201d In the early twentieth century, many avant-garde practices modeled themselves on scientific research or mathematical calculation; think, for example, of the Russian Constructivists or Piet Mondrian\u2019s Neoplasticism. Sigmar Polke would appear to mercilessly ironize these rationalist pretentions in well-known works such as\u00a0Moderne Kunst<\/em>\u00a0(1968). Yet at the same time, Polke\u2019s art in the 1960s and \u201970s was deeply engaged with modern techniques of mechanical reproduction, such as halftone dot printing, even as his approach to manual gesture undermined the intuitive expressionism of the preceding modernist generation. In the research that this grant will support, I intend to investigate this dialectic in Polke's art by focusing on the two forms that I call the raster and the squiggle. The raster is a mimesis of automatized image-making, whereas the squiggle is a mimesis of \u201cfree\u201d gestural expression. What is important is, first, that neither is exactly identical with the kind of mark-making that it imitates, and second, that neither exists in isolation from the other; rather, technical reproduction mediates irrational impulses even as quasi-Dadaist absurdities undermine technical rationality. The outcome of my research will be a chapter in a book in which I will focus on three moments in the relation between art and modern technical\/economic rationalization: namely, 1) discourses of mimesis and construction in the 1920s; 2) interactions between art, labor, and capitalist production in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s-70s; and 3) the curious simultaneity of a vogue for new animisms in the art world (\u201cthe agency of things\u201d; \u201cvibrant materiality\u201d) with the rise of artificial intelligence technology, and in particular new generative imaging algorithms, in the early 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century.\u00a0Daniel Spaulding<\/strong> is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on art in twentieth-century Western Europe, global modernism, critical theory, and the history of art history. Prof. Spaulding previously worked in the Curatorial Department of the Getty Research Institute and taught at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. He is currently finishing a monograph on the artist Joseph Beuys, based on a dissertation completed at Yale University in 2017, as well as an edited volume on Romanticism in the visual arts. Writings of his have appeared or are forthcoming in the\u00a0Journal of Art Historiography<\/em>,\u00a0October<\/em>,\u00a0Oxford Art Journal<\/em>,\u00a0Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics<\/em>, and the\u00a0Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Kunstgeschichte<\/em>,\u00a0among other publications. He is a founding editor of\u00a0Selva: A Journal of the History of Art\u00a0<\/em>(selvajournal.org<\/a>). He received the Joseph Beuys Prize for Research in 2022; in 2023, he was awarded a Wallace Fellowship from Villa I Tatti \u2013 The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIPS 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucy Degens, Collective life and work with Sigmar Polke at Gaspelshof in Willich<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

\u201cWell, you know, sometimes I need to work alone; and sometimes I need to work with others; and sometimes it is necessary to just play.\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a>Such was Sigmar Polke\u2019s 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 \u201chippiesque commune,\u201d its beds were temporarily occupied by a series of ever-changing guests.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The former gallerist Erhard Klein described it as a culture involving \u201cLots of drinking, smoking hash, making love, painting, travelling, making music and working.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Such a\u00a0lifestyle manifested itself in collaborative works and exhibitions, such as the show\u00a0Mu Nieltnam\u00a0Netorruprup<\/em>, held in 1975, a group exhibition involving Achim Duchow, Astrid Heibach, and Memphis Schulze,[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0the artists\u2019 newspaper\u00a0Day by Day \u2026 They Take Some\u00a0Brain Away<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0participation in the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0Bienal de S\u00e3o 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.\u00a0The significance of this period for Sigmar Polke\u2019s 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\u00a0Museum f\u00fcr 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\u00a0contexts 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\u00a0source of ideas but also the author of collaborative products.[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The exclusive focus of these recent exhibitions concerning the 1970s threatens to engender a temporal\u00a0decontextualization of this creative period. As early as the 1960s, the collective genesis of works and issues of multiple authorship \u2013 for example collaborations with Christof Kohlh\u00f6fer and Gerhard Richter \u2013 were part of Polke\u2019s practice. Such a development forms a principal element of the present art historical investigation.\u00a0In 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\u00a0one of expanding the existing exclusionary approaches involving only isolated groups of works by Sigmar Polke and to outline\u00a0wider historical and social contexts.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Reise, Barbara: Who, What Is \u2018Sigmar Polke\u2019,<\/em> in:\u00a0Studio International,<\/em>\u00a0982.1976, p. 84.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Steffen, Katharina: Day by Day \u2026 ein Flashback mit Zukunft<\/em>,\u00a0in:\u00a0Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries<\/em>, eds. Petra Lange-Berndt\/Dietmar R\u00fcbel (Hamburg, Kunsthalle Hamburg, March 13, 2009 to January 17, 2010) Cologne 2009, p. 296.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Sigmar Polke. Photographs (1964-1990)<\/em>, eds. Silke Lemmes\/Bianca Quasebarth (D\u00fcsseldorf, Sies + H\u00f6ke, June 28 to August 28, 2021; Berlin, Galerie Kicken, January 21 to March 4, 2022) D\u00fcsseldorf\/Berlin 2022, p. 88.[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Lange-Berndt, Petra\/ R\u00fcbel, Dietmar: Third Reich\u2019n\u2019Roll. Nationalsozialismus als Tabu und Provokation<\/em>, in:\u00a0Singular\/Plural. Kollaborationen in der Post-Pop-Polit-Arena D\u00fcsseldorf 1969<\/em>\u20131980<\/em>, eds. Petra Lange-Berndt\/ Dietmar R\u00fcbel\/Max Schulze\/Gregor Jansen (D\u00fcsseldorf, Kunsthalle D\u00fcsseldorf, July 8 to October 1) Cologne 2017, p. 125.[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Schulze, Max: A Planet Where Time Misbehaves<\/em>, in:\u00a0Singular\/Plural.\u00a0Kollaborationen in der Post-Pop-Polit-Arena D\u00fcsseldorf 1969<\/em>\u20131980<\/em>, eds. Petra Lange-Berndt\/ Dietmar R\u00fcbel \/ Max Schulze\/ Gregor Jansen (D\u00fcsseldorf, Kunsthalle D\u00fcsseldorf, July 8 to October 1) Cologne 2017, p 183.\u00a0Lucy Degens<\/strong> is an art historian as well as media and culture studies scholar. She is currently completing her master\u2019s degree\u00a0in Art Education and Cultural Management\u00a0at the Heinrich Heine University in D\u00fcsseldorf 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\u00a0research focuses on contemporary and post-war art.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mateusz Sapija, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF EAST AND WEST. SIGMAR POLKE AND EASTERN EUROPE<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

Born as a Silesian in Oels, Polke at the age of four, along with his family, fled the now-Polish town during German expulsion towards Soviet-occupied East Germany. He relocated to West Germany eight years after and has remained there ever since. Although his roots are reaching to what is now Poland, Polke\u2019s oeuvre is usually discussed in the context of the Western hemisphere. At the same time, his relationship with Eastern Europe is still under-explored.\u00a0Although he was still a youngster when he departed the East for the West, Polke was mature enough to understand the unstable reality and post-war struggles defining the Eastern bloc. His arrival in West Germany was the arrival to the reality of a tremendous socio-political and economic advancement of the late-1950s defined by the Wirtschaftswunder \u2013 an economic phenomenon important not only to the country\u2019s financial prosperity but also to the rebuilding of the national identity. Polke remained calmly distant to this paradigm, which may be proven by his often-repeated words: \u201cWhen I came to the West I saw many, many things for the first time. But I also saw the prosperity of the West critically. It wasn't really Heaven. (\u2026) This attitude\u2014 looking at what is happening from a point of view outside\u2014is still part of my work.\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0As not only an outsider but also a notoriously reclusive personality, Polke resisted participating in the explanation of his work and strongly protected his personal life. Thus, the interpretation and history of Polke\u2019s oeuvre was mostly constructed by the artworld, which positioned him in the Western Hemisphere context, mainly due to the Cold War attitude and its long-lasting legacy impacting the art historical thinking. Examining these developments in Polke\u2019s personal and artistic history on the one hand, while aiming to respond to the lack of his work analysis from this angle on the other hand, this research aims to examine and rediscover the connection between Polke and Eastern Europe through in-depth archival research and literature review.\u00a0In its second strand, the research will pursue an exploration of Polke\u2019s influence on Eastern European artistic production, which occurred both directly, towards artists and groups whom encountered Polke or exhibited in the same exhibitions, or indirectly, as a result of his seminal practice and formative approach towards the media of painting. A survey of present scholarship manifests that although there have been research projects of artistic exchanges occurring between Eastern and Western Germany and Europe, these have not impacted the main discourse. This claim may be further strengthened in the context of cultural politics relaxation occurring since Erich Honecker\u2019s tenure in 1971, and especially after the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany in 1973 when the East German artists started to regularly travel to Western Europe. Thus, while the Berlin Wall did make the travel to the West more challenging, it did not stop Eastern Europeans from doing so, nor did it prevent Eastern European art from being exhibited. Several examples demonstrate Polke's seminal influence on Eastern European art, but also a complex set of relations and attitudes towards his legacy. Their further exploration, pursued by this project via interviews with Eastern European artists, will primarily establish a yet non-explored perspective on Polke and re-examine his work in the context of Europe's revised artistic geography and the continent's revaluated centre-periphery relations.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Sigmar Polke in Martin Gayford, A Weird Intelligence<\/em>.\u00a0Modern Painters<\/em>\u00a016, no. 4 (2004), pp. 78\u201385, p. 78.Mateusz Sapija<\/strong> is a researcher and curator. He graduated from UCL Qatar MA in Museum Studies and the Goldsmiths College MFA Curating. He works on a PhD in History of Art at the Edinburgh College of Art, titled\u00a0The Rise of Post-Democracy in Contemporary European Art<\/em>. Currently, he is a DAAD Doctoral Fellow at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science - LMU Munich. He worked with numerous art institutions and projects \u2013 such as Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Asakusa (Tokyo),\u00a0Sharjah Biennale 12<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0documenta 14<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 being engaged in roles related to research, curating and public programming.\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Luke Smythe, Polke and Material Art History<\/em><\/h4>
<\/h5>

Sigmar Polke is well-known for his wide-ranging engagement with all manner of substances in his art.\u00a0\u00a0But his work has yet to find its place within the materials-focussed narratives of art\u2019s development in recent decades that are currently being written. With this consideration in mind, my research project takes up the task of writing a new material history of Polke\u2019s art. By more thoroughly examining the function of materials in his work, and more closely attending to his partnerships with non-human actors, I aim, first, to establish a clearer picture of his attitudes to matter and materials and, second, to position him within the expansive nexus of art practices that during the long arc of his career made related but distinct investments in matter and its creative capabilities.\u00a0There is no shortage of discussion of Polke\u2019s myriad material experiments, but this has often focussed on isolated bodies of work. His approach to material agency has been widely discussed as well, but mainly in relation to movements like gestural abstraction, Dada and Surrealism, and his interests in alchemy and art history. I plan, in contrast, to provide a more encompassing overview of his relationship to matter and materials, as this evolved across all areas of his practice between the 1960s and his passing, and to connect his work to other styles and movements in which matter is of primary concern. Adopting this perspective will allow me to explore the hypothesis that, by virtue of his material sensibilities, Polke can be placed art-historically between two generations of artists: European painters of the postwar period for whom matter, in the guise of shattered objects and obliterated bodies, had been synonymous with devastation; and an array of contemporary figures who embrace it as a vital and self-organising fount of creativity.\u00a0During the first phase of Polke\u2019s career, the shadow of the war\u2019s devastation loomed large across his work. But rather than evoke matter in its raw and degraded postwar states in the manner of established painters like Jean Fautrier, Jean Dubuffet, and Alberto Burri, he engaged with manufactured materials in the guise of consumer products and printed images. Although familiar with the hardships of the early postwar period, Polke used his Pop-inflected work of the 1960s to air misgivings about the culture of reconstruction. As industrial control of nature had expanded throughout the\u00a0Wiederaufbau<\/em>, a standardised material environment had taken shape. In response to this development, the lives of the burgeoning middle class were becoming as banal and homogenised as the products they consumed. Frustrated by this arrangement, Polke started to unravel and contest it in his work of the 1970s, which was informed by a new approach to materials.\u00a0It was then that he started working with raw and unstable substances, whose agency he only partly controlled. In so doing, he embraced a freer, more collaborative conception of subject-object relations than that which prevailed in the wider culture. His use of LSD as a creative co-contributor to his work was another important marker of this shift. Ingesting it endowed his sensorium with new creative capabilities, and he fed some of the resulting experiences back into his art.\u00a0\u00a0But who or what was responsible for the works that bore their imprint? In each case there were several creative agents at work, who for a time became entangled, to the point where their respective contributions cannot be distinguished. As his career progressed, he would increasingly embrace such entangled arrangements and expand their parameters.\u00a0Conceiving of Polke\u2019s work in this collaborative fashion suggests a new way of interpreting his attitudes to matter. Instead of understanding it as something low or abject in the vein of postwar matter painters or other artists working in the tradition of the informe, he lifted it above the state of fully-formed materials. Even when his works appear formless and degraded, they play host to effects of wonder and transformational strangeness, facilitated by the independent actions of unstable materials.\u00a0Positioning Polke as a celebrant of matter, alert to the entanglement of agents who cannot be strictly separated from each other, edges him toward more recent figures, like Olafur Eliasson, Herwig Weiser, Susanne Kriemann, and many others, who call attention to the agency of non-human actors in their work, often on ecological grounds and with a view to expanding our conception of what ought to count as living, creative and intelligent. I am not yet sure how closely he aligns with such figures, but I aim to elucidate this relationship, along with other issues relating to his place within material art history.Luke Smythe<\/strong> is Senior Lecturer in Art History at Monash University. His articles and essays on modern and contemporary art have appeared in many journals and catalogues, including\u00a0October<\/em>,\u00a0Modernism\/modernity<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Oxford Art Journal<\/em>.\u00a0He is the author of two books:\u00a0Gretchen Albrecht: Between Gesture and Geometry<\/em>\u00a0(Massey University Press, 2019) and\u00a0Gerhard Richter, Individualism, and Belonging in West Germany<\/em>\u00a0(Routledge, 2022).\u00a0From 2012-2014, he was Guest Curator in Postwar Art at\u00a0the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIPS 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tereza de Arruda, M.A., Day by Day \u2013 Sigmar Polke Starts aN AWAY Dialogue<\/em><\/h4>
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The significance and resonance of Sigmar Polke\u2019s artistic production in Europe and North America are established and reviewed in numerous facets of his artistic potential. For the Anna Polke Stiftung\u2019s scholarship program, I am proposing an analysis and the possible relation and dialogue of Sigmar Polke\u2019s work in contexts outside the Euro-North American domain. In conducting this research, I turn my focus to his participation in two distinct biennials \u2013 S\u00e3o Paulo and Havana.\u00a0\u00a0In 1975 Sigmar Polke participated in the\u00a0XIII Bienal de\u00a0S\u00e3o Paulo\u00a0and received his first international award the\u00a0Prize for painting of the city of S\u00e3o Paulo.\u00a0<\/em>The German participation at the biennial had Evelyn Weiss as commissioner, who also invited Georg Baselitz and Blinky Palermo to represent Germany in S\u00e3o Paulo. In the official catalogue, she justifies her choice as following: \u201cThree artists, three basically divergent positions in relation to painting. This is already noticeable through the adopted technique: one paints with the fingers (Baselitz), the other uses sprays and collage (Polke), the third party uses exclusively the brush (Palermo).\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0She specifies her choice of Polke: \u201cPolke has a very unorthodox and adamant approach to contents and forms of expression, while his behavior closely linked to the environment and society marks his works, in which he also often collaborates with his friends and acquaintances.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0As a young artist Sigmar Polke traveled to S\u00e3o Paulo to participate in the Biennial. He was faced with a country amid military dictatorship camouflaged by rhythm, beauty and tropical spirit. The local art scene employed artifice to defend its freedom of expression. Polke already displayed and defended remarkable characteristics of his being and artistic existence. With curiosity, self-confidence, and irony, he appeared in S\u00e3o Paulo with the casualness of a flaneur in his appreciation of the local society accentuated by a spirit of inquiry and the critical sense of a traveling artist to capture, record, and conserve his local experience. One of the testimonies of this experience is the 16 mm film he produced,\u00a0Sigmar Polke: S\u00e3o Paulo, 1973-75\u00a0<\/em>(28 min.).\u00a0<\/em>Its soundtrack is an extract from the publication\u00a0A Grain of Mustard Seed (The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution)\u00a0<\/em>by\u00a0<\/em>M\u00e1rcio M. Alves published in 1973.\u00a0This provides proof that Polke was always\u00a0aware of the contexts he was entering.\u00a0After this initial encounter with South America, Sigmar Polke never went back to Brazil. On the other hand, the involvement in the international art scene was extensive, cultivated, and established a global dialogue.\u00a0Part of my interest in this research is to investigate how aware Sigmar Polke was of the local art scene and the corresponding artistic movements, as well as the significance of the presentation of his work in such a context. 45 years after this episode, the temptation to create a dialogue between Sigmar Polke and the protagonists of the local art scene emerges as a face-to-face coexistence. This should be analyzed today from both a temporal and art historical perspective, with the knowledge that Sigmar Polke cultivated a strong relationship with his artists colleagues, as described by Evelyn Weiss above.\u00a0Polke himself was a keen and critical observer of the miraculous period of post-war progress captured by his experiences, eyes, and lens. This miscellany was the basis of his archive, which was continually recombined in his vast creative production and shared with both his friends and in the context of art. \u201cPolke\u2019s camera accompanied him on all his trips, exhibition openings, activities among friends and shared games. Life was a performance. And like other artists, he was always concerned with rediscovering artistic production and practice. One formative influence was the transference of criticism of the bourgeois order to the individual\u2019s way of life, so that art, the revolutionary zeitgeist, and everyday life became mutually permeable.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0This scholarship will provide me with the opportunity to deepen my research on the resonance of Sigmar Polke\u2019s work in Brazil in two ways: based on the exhibitions in which he participated and the close dialogue of his own production with the work of protagonists in contemporary Brazilian art. Additionally, for the research involved in this scholarship, I will be considering the perspective of Sigmar Polke\u2019s participation in the 14th<\/sup>\u00a0Havana Biennial. From this perspective I will be analyzing the reaction and possible constructive dialogues to be developed from a confrontation with the work of Sigmar Polke in one of the last communist countries in the world. Polke often stressed the conflict of the human being metaphorically crushed between the condition of the State and their own reality and phantasy. To a certain extent, this tension plays a subtle and ironic role in his work. Sigmar Polke uses magical formulas and metamorphoses as a form of expression, alternating between trivia and high-brow culture, moving among politics, economics, science, beliefs, social behavior, and other areas. In this universe, he spread \u2018capitalist realism\u2019 in opposition to \u2018official\u2019 socialist realism that existed in East Germany from the end of the Second World War until 1989. Cuba is one of the last\u00a0reminiscences\u00a0of this political heritage. The Havana Biennial is one of the few cultural platforms that is a relevant player for intercontinental dialogue and an understanding of the past, current, and future perspectives of the cultural relationship with Cuba.\u00a0[1]<\/a> Evelyn Weiss,\u00a0Alemanha<\/em>, in\u00a0exh. cat.\u00a0XII Bienal de S\u00e3o Paulo, S\u00e3o Paulo 1975, p. 26.[2]<\/a> Ibid. (transl. amended).[3]<\/a> From the press release of the exhibition\u00a0Sigmar Polke and the 1970s,\u00a0<\/em>Nov 4, 2018 \u2013 Mar 10, 2019, Museum f\u00fcr Gegenwartskunst Siegen (transl. amended).Tereza de Arruda<\/strong> is an art historian and curator and has worked with various international institutions since the 1990s. She has been an advisor to the Havana Biennial since 1997, co-curator of the Kunsthalle Rostock since 2015, as well as the co-curator of the Curitiba International Biennial between 2009 and 2019. With a keen interest in the work of Sigmar Polke, she curated the exhibition\u00a0Sigmar Polke Capitalist Realism and other illustrated histories\u00a0<\/em>at the\u00a0Museu de Arte de S\u00e3o Paulo\u00a0(MASP) with the works by Polke from the collection Kunstraum am Limes, in 2011. De Arruda also curated\u00a0Sigmar Polke \u2013 The Editions<\/em>\u00a0at me Collectors Room Berlin in 2017, which was accompanied by a publication at K\u00f6nig Verlag.\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ian Rothwell, Polke\u2019s Bad Drawing<\/em><\/h4>
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Polke\u2019s Bad Drawing<\/em>\u00a0is a project about Sigmar Polke\u2019s sense of humour, specifically as it relates to his drawing output in the 1960s when he (along with Gerhard Richter, Konrad Lueg and Manfred Kuttner) styled himself as a \u2018Capitalist Realist\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0In this period he made a series of drawings of commodity goods, often made on crumpled scraps of paper, which have a provisional, casual, slapdash, and careless aesthetic. They look like intentionally bad versions of the pop art that was coming out of America at the time. There has been a lot of writing on these works. Not least, by Mark Godfrey, Dietmar R\u00fcbel, and Darsie Alexander in the book\u00a0Living with Pop: A Reproduction of Capitalist Realism<\/em>\u00a0(2013), and in the catalogue for a 1999 exhibition at MoMA titled\u00a0Sigmar Polke: Works on Paper, 1963\u20131974.<\/em>This project will build on the established literature on Polke\u2019s drawing and provide a new focus on his artistic methodology, which I will argue is intentionally bad, ironic, sarcastic, and stupid. It is in this respect that this project is about Polke\u2019s sense of humour. This is an important, essential, aspect of his oeuvre and overall aesthetic sensibility. However, it has, until this point, not received any significant studied attention. To my mind, Polke\u2019s \u2018Bad Drawings\u2019 exemplify his sense of humour. This is why they demand attention. They are funny. But their humour is a kind of anti-humour \u2013 the ironic outcome of a seeming lack of craft, skill, and, more significantly, of any clear critical or political position. This lack is made to seem funny.\u00a0I want to investigate this sense of humour. How can a focus on Polke\u2019s humour supplement an analysis of these works? What about Polke\u2019s style or \u2018draughtsmanship\u2019\u00a0<\/em>makes them appear ironic? How does an artist draw sarcastically? To what extent is Polke\u2019s style a response to the German socio-cultural context? How can we evaluate this response? To what extent can we see Polke\u2019s ironic, sarcastic sense of humour, or anti-humour, as critical?Whilst these \u2018Bad Drawings\u2019 were made in the 1960s, my specific focus on them in terms of their sense of humour also raises a very contemporary problem, which will also be explored in this project. Polke\u2019s ironic and sarcastic style pre-empts the dominant sensibility of much \u2018post-internet\u2019 art and culture, which has been variously criticised for its use of irony and sarcasm as a form of overcompensation for a supposed lack of criticality. This sensibility has been pejoratively labelled a form of \u2018aspirational nihilism\u2019, which refers to a culture of sarcasm and anti-establishment sentiment that was once the preserve of the Left but has now been absorbed into the neo-reactionary and gleefully sociopathic \u2018alt-right\u2019 ideology and the imperative to \u2018disrupt\u2019 in Silicon Valley.\u00a0\u00a0There is a risk that Polke\u2019s \u2018Bad Drawings\u2019 and his particular sense of humour might be collapsed into this\u00a0bad object\u00a0<\/em>of \u2018aspirational nihilism\u2019. In this respect, a nuanced analysis of strategic forms of irony and sarcasm in art making is needed. It is needed so that we can extricate artistic forms, such as Polke\u2019s \u2018Bad Drawings\u2019, from these noxious contemporary socio-cultural trends. Building on this, this project will argue that Polke\u2019s \u2018Bad Drawings\u2019 can be seen as blueprints for an ironic and sarcastic form of art making that resists this contemporary trend of \u2018aspirational nihilism\u2019, producing critical consciousness rather than gleeful sociopathy.\u00a0Dr Ian Rothwell<\/strong> is an art historian with a focus on contemporary art and digital culture. He received his PhD in History of Art from the University of Edinburgh in 2017 for a project titled\u00a0Images under Control: Pessimism, Humour, and Stupidity in the Digital Age<\/em>. He currently works as a Teaching Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Edinburgh where he teaches specialist course options on \u2018Art and Digital Culture\u2019 and \u2018Bad Painting\u2019, which analyses how painting came to be seen as the \u2018bad object\u2019 of contemporary art.\u00a0\u00a0He is also working on a monograph titled\u00a0The Afterlives of Post Internet Art<\/em>, to be published by Routledge in 2022.\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIPS 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ksenija Tschetschik-Hammerl, M.A., Hasenschleife.\u00a0Sigmar Polke\u2019s D\u00fcrer Appropriation<\/em><\/h4>
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Two motifs from the oeuvre of the Nuremberg Renaissance painter Albrecht D\u00fcrer appear several times in the work of Sigmar Polke. On the one hand, Polke worked with the image of the famous\u00a0Young Hare\u00a0<\/em>(germ.\u00a0Hase<\/em>)\u00a0from the Albertina in Vienna; and on the other, he copied the lines forming loops (germ. sing. Schleife) and curves in D\u00fcrer's marginal drawings in the prayer book of Emperor Maximilian and of the large-format woodcut\u00a0Der Gro\u00dfe Triumphwagen\u00a0(The Large Triumphal Carriage)<\/em>. Sigmar Polke's artistic language, in which heterogeneous motifs, materials and techniques are interwoven and often recur in different contexts, suggests that D\u00fcrer\u2019s motifs also relate to each other in his work reflecting a complex and dynamic relationship between the artist and his older colleague. In the present research project, Polke\u2019s selection and use of D\u00fcrer's motifs are scrutinized in relation to one another for the first time. It attempts to reconstruct Polke\u2019s appropriation of works by the Nuremberg master as a process of artistic examination spanning several decades.\u00a0The method of artistic appropriation is considered one of the most important forms of expression and strategies in modern and postmodern art. The term\u00a0appropriation art<\/em>\u00a0has established itself in art criticism since the ground-breaking New York exhibition\u00a0Pictures<\/em>\u00a0in 1977, which presented works by a number of young American artists. Although the presentational formats of the participating contributions diverged considerably, the imitation of imagery from outside sources characterized all of the projects. The imitation of works of others as well as various appropriations of the \u2018foreign\u2019 can already be observed in works by pre-modern artists. In art-historical research, these practices are usually explained as involving learning intentions, commitment to a canon, or motives related to artistic competition. Only rarely are reflexive or critical artistic motivations considered in connection with the imitation practices in older art. In contrast, various forms of imitation and processing of images or other objects created by others in twentieth and twenty-first century art are predominantly interpreted as subversive and critical strategies of expression. The special feature of the art-critical and art-historical reception of Polke\u2019s appropriations of D\u00fcrer\u2019s works has so far been that it is characterized by two seemingly contradictory interpretative perspectives, thus creating the impression of a disconcertingly incongruent view of D\u00fcrer on the part of Polke.\u00a0While Polke\u2019s works incorporating the motif of D\u00fcrer\u2019s hare are explained as a persiflage of post-war consumer culture or as a trivialization of artistic tradition, his adoptions of D\u00fcrer\u2019s line loops are primarily interpreted as an exceedingly serious examination of D\u00fcrer\u2019s creative impetus or at least of his artistic status. Hence the current state of research on Polke\u2019s reception of D\u00fcrer reveals contradictory and almost mutually exclusive explanatory concepts and calls for a thorough reconsideration. The present research project focuses on the interplay between various appropriations of D\u00fcrer\u2019s works in Sigmar Polke's oeuvre. The investigation touches on fundamental questions of Polke research, including the correlation between irony and Polke\u2019s interest in creative and generative processes in his art. Furthermore, the significance of authorship and artistic authority in Polke's oeuvre is re-examined.Ksenija Tschetschik-Hammerl<\/strong> studied Art and Visual History as well as Modern History at Humboldt University in Berlin. In February 2020, she submitted her dissertation there titled\u00a0Originalit\u00e4t der Nachahmung um 1600. Kunst begegnet Natur bei Hans Hoffmann und Daniel Fr\u00f6schel\u00a0<\/em>(Originality of Imitation Around 1600: Art Faces Nature In the Works of Hans Hoffmann and Daniel Fr\u00f6schel<\/em>). The dissertation project was supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. She was also a lecturer in art history at the Caspar David Friedrich Institute in Greifswald. Her teaching and research focuses on art and collecting practice in the early modern era, monograms and signatures, as well as artistic appropriation practices from the early modern period to the present.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Magnus Sch\u00e4fer, M.A., There is No Such Thing as Too Much Information: Sigmar Polke and the Digital<\/em><\/h4>
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From the 1960s until the first decade of the twenty-first century, Sigmar Polke's multifaceted work questioned and deliberately undermined the conventions of artistic media including painting, drawing, photography, film and language. While he nominally adhered to these media, he continually eroded their boundaries, relinquishing established certainties about their appearance and functions. The period in which Polke worked coincided with the proliferation of digital communication and image media. This raises the question of whether and to what extent Polke\u2019s images can be brought into a productive dialogue with this development. Of less interest here is the role digital images have played in Polke\u2019s work, which is minor.\u00a0Rather, the research project\u00a0Es gibt kein Zuviel an Information.\u00a0Sigmar Polke und das Digitale (There is No Such Thing as Too Much Information: Sigmar Polke and the Digital)<\/em>\u00a0investigates the forms in which the relationship between the continuity of the Kittlerian \u201cReal\u201d and its translation into discrete information characterizing the digital comes into play in Polke's hybrid image media.As Rachel Jans and Kathrin Rottmann have pointed out in their contributions to the catalogue\u00a0Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010<\/em>, some of Polke\u2019s works from the 1960s attest to a familiarity on the part of the artist with the technical-formal foundations of the television image coded into individual pixels (conveyed by his teacher Karl-Otto G\u00f6tz) and the binary on\/off scheme of digital operations. However, the fact that Polke imagined digital communication in 1968 as a telepathic session with the late poet William Blake illustrates that the seriousness with which contemporaries such as Max Bense had proposed communication theory as the basis for a new aesthetic a few years earlier is diametrically opposed to Polke\u2019s artistic sensitivity.In the early 1980s, however, things looked somewhat different.\u00a0The Copyist<\/em>\u00a0(1982) shows a figure in the foreground, bent over a desk and writing into a large book. This medieval copyist is not reproducing another manuscript, but is observing a landscape which, the composition suggests, he translates into writing; he transfers the phenomenological wealth of what he sees into a discreet and symbolic medium, thus opening it up to further forms of data processing.At the other end of the media spectrum are Polke\u2019s novel gestural-abstract works, among them the\u00a0Negative Value\u00a0<\/em>triptych, also created in 1982. These pictures feature iridescent surface effects, which Polke achieved through special treatment of violet pigments; they change according to the standpoint of the viewer, so that the three canvases can appear dramatically different from different perspectives. These effects\u2014and thus the images as such\u2014are difficult to capture in photographs and thus resist being stored as discrete information. Polke developed this experimental approach at a time when electronic data processing was becoming more and more important and visible. With the technique of dragnet investigation introduced in the late 1970s, automated data processing became established in the societal consciousness of the Federal Republic of Germany. At about the same time, the first PCs became available to consumers. Against this background, Polke\u2019s abstract images could be understood, with reference to the media theorist Friedrich Kittler, as the noise that underlies all communication and simultaneously forms the unwritable counterpart to the symbolic.Polke also began experimenting with photocopiers in the 1980s. Enlargements of images from newspapers and magazines made the raster of the printed originals clearly visible\u2014an effect he had been reproducing manually since the 1960s. Owing to the inaccuracy of the copying process, these enlargements created previously invisible constellations of raster dots which Polke sometimes extended or commented on with additional graphisms in order to give them a figurative meaning. By moving the originals during the copying process, he distorted representational motifs, sometimes causing them to become abstract (e.g. in the portfolio\u00a0Kugelsichere Ferien (Bullet-Proof Holidays)<\/em>\u00a0from 1995). In the vocabulary of communication theory, noise stands for too many choices on the part of the recipient, i.e. a surplus of information that erases meaning. In order to transmit information economically, it is necessary to achieve the ideal distance between meaning and the inevitable noise. Polke\u2019s photocopy experiments show that an excess of information can also lead to new meanings, thus opening up a productive dimension to noise.In terms of the significance of the digital in Polke's later works, the question arises as to how far the juxtaposition with Hito Steyerl's concept of the \u201cpoor\u201d image (cf. her essay\u00a0In Defense of the Poor Image<\/em>\u00a0from 2009) can be illuminating. As it circulates through the media, the \u201cpoor\u201d image, which is digital in principle, undergoes processes of compression, quality reduction and contextual shift, and thus appears as a \u201cvisual idea in its very becoming,\u201d linked to the contemporary conditions of image distribution. Can Polke\u2019s distorted photocopies be understood as analogue precursors of these \u201cpoor\u201d images, or as a counter-model that, despite formal similarities (e.g. low resolution or reproductions of already reproduced material), makes the differences all the more obvious?Magnus Sch\u00e4fer<\/strong> is an author and curator. From 2012 to 2019 he was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he co-organized the retrospectives\u00a0Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010<\/em>\u00a0(2014) and\u00a0Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts\u00a0<\/em>(2018-19), and organized\u00a0Projects 195: Park McArthur<\/em>\u00a0(2018-19), the artist\u2019s first institutional solo exhibition in New York. Together with Hannes Loichinger he published the first comprehensive monograph on Ull Hohn, titled\u00a0Foregrounds, Distances,\u00a0<\/em>in\u00a02015. The focus of his current research is on the role of digital media in formatting perception.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


SCHOLARSHIP HOLDERS 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dIRK HILDEBRANDT, DR. des., In die Fl\u00e4che publizieren.\u00a0Sigmar Polke\u2019s (artist) books<\/em><\/h4>
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The Anna Polke Foundation-funded project\u00a0In die Fl\u00e4che Publizieren (Publishing in two dimensions)<\/em> explores a medium that offers new insights into Sigmar Polke's entire artistic production: the (artist) book.The fact that art is initially in parentheses here is due not least to the fact that Polke's books do not stand out, at least not in the sense of artist books as they are known from the corresponding research \u2013 for instance as particularly exalted and expensive 'originals' that above all explore the limits of the book format. Polke's book-like publications appear - mainly as 'wolves in sheep's clothing', i.e. as outwardly rather reservedly designed examples of their genre. Consequently, it is not only a matter of focusing on the individual 'book as a work of art', but also on the manifold contexts in which Polke (re)-turned to the book as a publication medium for his artistic production. This means that not only these books themselves, but also their relationships to neighbouring formats should be examined, the design and publication of which the artist practiced over the course of his career (e.g. newspaper articles, editions, articles in catalogues and magazines). In short, the (artist) book is of interest as a medium that opens up contexts in Polke's multifaceted oeuvre and enables connecting structures to be revealed.So the 'art' in Polke's (artist) books is not in parentheses here because, for example, its status, its 'artfulness' and its belonging to the artist's oeuvre would be otherwise unclear. Rather, it is about the book as mediator that allows the artist's procedures, which extend to artless (and therefore political) contexts, such as those known from Polke's painting or graphic art, to be made comprehensible in another, different way. In relation to Polke's oeuvre, the (artist) book has different explanatory functions. It not only makes visible connections to artistic and historical, as well as economic and political contexts, but also makes intermedial processes readable. In other words, the (artist) book promises to mediate in a new way between painting, sculpture, photography, film, and church windows, i.e. the forms of expression for which the artist's work is generally appreciated.Referring to the history of the book as a means of artistic expression or publication in this analysis has the advantage that it brings into play ideas of mediality that are off the beaten track of post-war art history. Unlike painting, for example, the book appears per se as a medium that defines its own subject matter and nature by borrowing from other and different media. In order to be able to represent this 'otherness' in a meaningful way with regard to Polke's art, it is nevertheless indispensable to stick closely to the 'previous' history. Concepts of 'flatness' are available to investigate connections between book and painting. While these concepts, especially under the conditions of the 1960s, were still closely connected to an engagement with painting, the project\u00a0In die Fl\u00e4che publizieren<\/em> investigates an intermedial flatness that is intended to allow the various technical, artistic and contextual interrelationships within Sigmar Polke's work to be followed.Dirk Hildebrandt<\/strong> is a research assistant at the Institute of Art History at the University of Cologne (focus on modern\/contemporary art and aesthetic theories); studied art history and philosophy in Bonn, Paris and Basel. Doctorate at the University of Basel (The Extension of Art. Allan Kaprow und der Werkbegriff des Happenings); current research interests: Asger Jorn and the networks of European post-war art, artists' books and processes of intermedial writing, theories of art and artists in modernism and the present.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Julie Sissia, \"Cher Ma\u00eetre\". Sigmar Polke and France<\/em><\/h4>
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\"Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) is one of the great painters of the second half of the twentieth century. We know this everywhere in Europe, except in France [...]\"[1]<\/sup><\/a>.In this succinct statement in the daily newspaper\u00a0Le Monde\u00a0<\/em>from 2013, the art historian Philippe Dagen deplores French museums' lack of interest in Sigmar Polke. While the artist was celebrated at MoMA and Tate Modern, the Mus\u00e9e national d'art moderne in Paris preferred Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons. However, this criticism must be viewed in a more differentiated way.\"Cher Ma\u00eetre\" (Dear Master)... Suzanne Pag\u00e9 turned to Sigmar Polke with admiration during the preparation of his exhibition at the Mus\u00e9e d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1988)[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/sup>. As director of the museum and the ARC \u2013 an experimental art space housed in the same building \u2013 Suzanne Pag\u00e9 made this institution an indispensable contemporary art venue in France beginning inthe early 1970s. At the museum, she particularly supported German artists of Sigmar Polke's generation. In 1981, Polke was on view in the exhibition Art Allemagne Aujourd'hui<\/em>; with the famous Berlin gallery owner Ren\u00e9 Block, she brought together artists who had made Germany one of the world\u2019s most dynamic art centres[3]<\/sup><\/a>. French museums\u2019 late recognition of an entire generation of German artists was a consequence of the painful history between the two countries; it was also due to the reluctance of French critics and art historians since the 1960s to accept that Paris was no longer the international art capital. The recognition of German artists in 1980s France was hardly unanimous.While in the 1980s the German identity that several German artists laid claim to irritated certain protagonists of the French art scene, Sigmar Polke enjoyed unanimous recognition. So what place does he occupy in the French discourse, and according to what criteria are his works perceived? I would like to investigate the extent to which French art historians and critics nevertheless viewed Sigmar Polke politically. The artist steered clear of national categories and was therefore not classified as a \"German artist\". But like his work, his French reception cannot be regarded as apolitical for this reason. From the bicentenary of the French Revolution (1989), to the exhibition Les Magiciens de la terre<\/em> \u2013 which was also part of this celebration \u2013 Polke's works are showcased in artistic events with strong political content that interrogate the history of France from an international perspective as well as its place in an increasingly globalized world.To what extent did French critics, and French artists, regard Polke's work as epitomizing new artistic paradigms? Is French discourse on his work singular in a time of crisis in modernity, which is often described in a somewhat hasty generalization as 'postmodernism'? The study intends to examine the values, as well as the prejudices \u2013 even if they are positive \u2013 on which the discourse on Polke's work is based. These hypotheses require a broader perspective on the French context. On the one hand, it is necessary to confront the French reception with other art critiques, whether in Germany (in the influential journal\u00a0Texte zur Kunst<\/em>), or in the USA (for example\u00a0October<\/em>); on the other hand, the role of relevant events, especially the Venice Biennale of 1986, which played an important part in the assessment of Sigmar Polke's work also in France, must be taken into account.[1]<\/sup><\/a>Philippe Dagen, Comment Sigmar Polke a rajeuni le vieil art de peindre, in\u00a0Le Monde<\/em>, 2 December 2013.[2]<\/sup><\/a>Paris, Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art moderne de la Ville de Paris, archives of the exhibition\u00a0Polke<\/em>, 20 October\u201331 December 1988.[3]<\/sup><\/a>Art Allemagne Aujourd\u2019hui<\/em>, Paris, Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 17 January\u20138 March 1981.Julie Sissia<\/strong> holds a doctorate in art history from the IEP of Paris (2015). She is associate researcher at the Centre d'histoire de sciences Po and lecturer at the Ecole du Louvre.\u00a0Her book entitled The German Mirror. GDR and FRG in the discourse on contemporary art in France.\u00a01959\u20131989<\/em> will be published by Les presses du r\u00e9el. In 2019, she worked as a scientific collaborator at the Mus\u00e9e d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris on the Hans Hartung retrospective (autumn 2019). From 2010 to 2015, she was a member of the research team at the German Centre for Art History (Paris) within the ERC project A chacun son r\u00e9el<\/em>.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n



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The Anna Polke Foundation awards two scholarships of \u20ac5,000 each every year. They are announced here at the beginning of each year. Call for ApplicationsThe 2026 call is now open. Apply now!Project proposals on Sigmar Polke, with a special focus on\u00a0Sigmar Polke. Athanor NOW\u00a0and especially his Biennale photographs can be submitted until May 1, 2026. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":30,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":218,"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5029,"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions\/5029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anna-polke-stiftung.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}