SIGMAR POLKE: POP MYSTIFICATION

Sigmar Polke in front of "Alice in Wonderland."

Sigmar Polke has a lot in common with the medieval alchemists, with whom he identifies. Like them, he is interested in transmutation, sometimes employing pigments and techniques that make his paintings change over time. Also, like those pseudo-scientists of the past, he combines mystification with explanation to lure public and patrons alike in the hope of acquiring the Philosopher’s Stone of ‘true art,’ and just as the charlatanry of alchemy led to frequent breakthroughs in the science of chemistry, so Polke’s often confusing art reveals glimpses of truth and light.

Recognized as one of the greatest German postwar artists, along with Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, Polke is in town for an exhibition of his art at the Ueno Mori Museum as part of “Germany Year in Japan 2005/06.” When I meet up with him for an interview, he is by turns pompous and droll, and also somewhat jetlagged.

Throughout his long career the 64-year-old artist has managed to defy categorization by occupying the space between figurative and abstract, organic and artificial, and hi–brow and low–brow art. He is also renowned for giving art critics a tough time, talking in riddles with a heavy German accent and refusing to answer questions about his private life. I ask him whether artists have a vested interest in mystifying the process of creation.

"Mystification is an old thing," he replies. "I’m not the only one practicing this. People always want to know how something works. It’s amusing to stop them finding out."

This is a game he seems to enjoy. To test him, I ask for his definition of art.

"Art is good for nothing and good for everything," he laughs, pleased with his latest evasion of the probing art critic.

Despite this elusiveness he can be remarkably forthcoming when asked questions about specific paintings, like Police Pig (1986), which is based on a photo of a policeman posing with a pig found in a newspaper.

"I chose this image because it had an anti–authoritarian frisson," he recalls. "I transferred it onto the canvass using a projector and then painted in all the dots by hand."

Police Pig

The dots he refers to are the dots of the newsprint dot matrix that make up the printed image. This process, which is one of his trademarks, creates image that straddle the line between the mechanical printing process and organic art.

By revealing the process, he also reveals the fact that this particular work. Although painstaking in its execution, didn’t require any advanced technical skill. The same can be said of many of his other works, here, including the exhibition’s flagship work, Alice in Wonderland (1971), which gives the exhibition its title. This is ‘merely’ a collage of patterned fabrics with Sir John Tenniel’s famous image of Alice and the hookah-toking Caterpillar outlined in white. So, almost anybody can do this?

"That’s right," he agrees. "If people have time for this and they want to do this, they can do it. It’s not a question of art or not art because anybody can do what I do. In fact these days most artists don’t make things by themselves. If they want to do something using a bronze, they have to employ a craftsman to do this. It’s actually a very old pattern that someone can do this so you don't need to do it. For example, I can’t fly a plane."

It’s no secret that the modern concept of the artist has become all but divorced from the traditional skills of the craftsman, but, if there are no technical skill requirements, what exactly is it that the artist brings to his work?

"I think what the artist brings is related to his conditioning and the intellectual field," he says.

In addition to its central motif, Alice in Wonderland juxtaposes a fabric patterned with kitschy football scenes, featuring tiny players, with a dotted fabric that ironically comments on Polke’s magnification of dot matrixes. There is also a large transparent image of a basketball player. All these visual elements comment on the basic theme of the famous incident in Lewis Carroll’s story, in which Alice becomes either bigger or smaller, depending on which side of the ‘magic mushroom’ she eats, with the Caterpillar’s presence underlining this theme of transmutation.

Seen in these terms, this is a skillful work that blends disparate sampled elements, weaving them into a complex cerebral tapestry, suggesting that Polke is a something of a 'visual hip hop artist,' a comparison that he is delighted with. But none of this is immediately obvious and there is a strong temptation, when looking at contemporary art, to see it as a complete break and rejection of traditional culture and its complex associations, and as something that doesn’t need any referential meaning. This is an approach Polke doesn’t encourage. What’s to stop people merely seeing this as a jumble of unrelated elements?

"That’s just their first view of the painting," he says. "How it looks on the surface and physically when you have no hold on it because you don’t understand it. You see it then you touch it very directly. You go in, not in the painting, but in the problem. Then you have more leverage."

The correct way to approach Polke’s work, therefore, is to learn as much about the paintings and their imagery as possible and view them as complex intellectual, as well as visual, puzzles. Like the alchemists, to whom he directly refers in the allegorized Sun and Moon figures in Conjunction (1983), the willing participation of the audience is essential to transform these works into the ‘Philospher’s Stone’ of artistic gold.

Sometimes this game can backfire, as the subjective input of the viewer takes over and, as with a Rorschach-test, he starts to see things that are entirely in his own mind. For example, one critic imagined that the figure in profile in The Dream of Menelaus I (1982), was the Nazi Reichsmarshal Hermann Goring. Such interpretations are, of course, an occupational hazard for German artists.

The Dream of Menelaus I

"No it’s not Hermann Goring," Polke exaplains, amused at the misunderstanding. "It’s a chimney sweeper. That idea is taken from an article by a Dutch art critic. I didn’t correct this. I didn’t explain this at all, so he kept repeating it. It’s really stupid, but what can I do?"

Part of a series on display that refers indirectly to the Homeric legend through figurative and abstract elements, this work again reveals the intellectual depth and education needed to approach Polke’s work, something that no doubt appeals to the self-selecting elitism of artistic connoisseurs.

The key to Polke’s success, however, is that he always sees the other side of the equation. Although art writers may find extremely intricate and often pretentious formulas to explain his art, he himself, retains a mischievous and down-to-earth humor. When asked what alchemical transformations he specializes in, he slowly raises himself out of his seat.