Sigmar Polke - Untitled (Stenogramm)

Sigmar Polke

Untitled (Stenogramm)
1985

Notebook: gouache, ink and ballpoint pen on 39 lined sheets. Spiral bound. 21.2. x 14.5 cm. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age.

“The career of the blot in art took off in around 1800, when 'Klecksography' was recognised as a design principle: At the beginning, there is the more or less controlled coincidence, abstract formations, the interpretation of which then takes over the artistic imagination, and the shaping and continuation of which is finally carried out by the artist's hand. Starting from the 'malheur', the artistic accident, and giving his fantasy free reign, Victor Hugo, for example, distinguished himself as a gifted draughtsman and blotter. Since then, amorphous blots can become the starting point for all possible pictorial inventions.
The German is annoyed and pleased in equal measures about a 'nice gift' when the fountain pens or brushes drip or the whole inkwell tips over. The ink blots seep deep into the pages of Polke's shorthand pad so that it looks like Rorschach formations when opened up. But Polke keeps blotting and writing, unfurling new constellations of stains, marking and delineating these with linear drawings, commenting on them with associative chunks of text.
With exuberant spontaneity, and open to the momentum of the process, he shows what can happen 'when the blot is left to be what it wants to be, namely a productive disruptive factor'. According to Ellen Wagner, 'the blot is so sympathetic […] precisely because it is so difficult to train”. (N.N., Sigmar Polke - Gerhard Richter, Schöne Bescherung, booklet accompanying the exhibition and collection presentation, Morsbroich, Leverkusen 2016, n.p.)

Provenance

Private collection, North Rhine Westphalia

Exhibitions

Leverkusen 2016 (Museum Morsbroich), Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Schöne Bescherung, leporello with colour ill., booklet with colour ill.