Sigmar Polke - Untitled (Weihnachten)

Sigmar Polke

Untitled (Weihnachten)
1985

Notebook with 93 lined sheets, collaged with printed newspaper and magazine cuttings, coloured inks and felt tip pens (approx. 12 sheets unworked). Approx. 20.5 x 16.4 x 2.8 cm. Signed dedication on inside back cover. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age.

'Polke's work is characterised by irony, which is accompanied by a “reservation against everything and anything”. “But it is complemented by an interest in everything and anything, an encyclopaedic interest”, which explains the diversity of his visual worlds (Martin Hentschel 1993). In this way, it is clear how Polke is able to transform the whole world and can detach the pictorial objects from their original contexts and invert them into the grotesque.
In this collaged book, […], Polke has further developed on Christmas finds from the Cologne press in the form of texts and pictures. From drawings of jokes about special offers and competitions for the festive season (from which the title-giving quote Schöne Bescherung was created) to shocking headlines from the Cologne Express, the collage exposes the complete madness that accompanies Christmas (“The same procedure as every year”...).
Intermittently, Polke merrily splodges onto the pages and repeatedly folds the book shut, as if he wanted to subject himself to a Rorschach test. He reworks some of the resulting smudged images and integrates them into this whimsical, highly entertaining Christmas panopticon.' (N.N., Sigmar Polke - Gerhard Richter, Schöne Bescherung, booklet accompanying the exhibition and collection presentation, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen 2016, n.pag.)

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.