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Lot Essay
‘Poison has consequences. Art has none. Except maybe a slow acting one… Poison just crept into my pictures. I was looking for brilliance of colour, and it happened to be toxic… In small doses it can be medicinal.’ – Sigmar Polke
Sigmar Polke’s Heraldische Blumen (Heraldic Flowers), 1996, is a rhapsody of colour, as astonishing and amorphous as the dispersion of ink in water. The vivid poured lacquer creates an entrancing and atmospheric field of colour: luminous fuchsia and frothy blue ooze across a golden background, the forms blending and yielding to one another. Atop, Polke has carefully inked two swaying trees, their surreal, simplified forms crowned with flowers, reminiscent of woodblock prints. Hovering elusively between abstraction and figuration, Heraldische Blumen presents an in-between space that confronts the viewer with a dream or hallucination, whose implicit narrative is ephemeral and indefinite. Polke’s paintings suggest a progression in time, depicting several layers of experience through
superimposition. His imagery is culled from a multitude of sources including art historical texts and illustrations, and scientific treatises; Polke was heavily influenced by the Old Masters. The titular flowers are sourced from heraldic emblems used to decorate coats of arms. As art historian Sean Rainbird writes, ‘Polke examines the picture as a whole, in which its basic components are given equal status, rather than standing in hierarchical relation. Painting, far from being a redundant practice in an era of mechanical, electronic and digital communications, is shown by Polke to be a resourceful medium, equipped to investigate the complexities of contemporary experience’ (S. Rainbird, ‘Seams and Appearances: Learning to paint with Sigmar Polke’, Sigmar Polke: Join the Dots, exh. cat., Tate, Liverpool, 1995, p. 9). Accordingly, Polke’s practice encourages time travel through paint, presenting a fusion of multi-layered and often unidentifiable imagery that suggests an oscillating universe, perpetually in a state of flux. Polke’s career is marked by reinvention and a constant search for new pictorial representation and his art suggests a world where transmutation and change are a near constant. His ravenous experiments with new chemicals culminated in the lacquer pour works, illustrated in Heraldische Blumen through a wave of intoxicating pink. Polke said, ‘I am trying to create another light, one that comes from refection. Like the celestial light, it gives the indication of new, supernatural things’ (S. Polke quoted in C. Vogel, ‘The Alchemist’s Moment: The Reclusive Mr.
Polke’, The New York Times, May 27, 2007, AR1). In Heraldische Blumen, colour and form intermingle in indescribable and fantastical ways, an experiment in alchemy, which results in radiant life blooming from the canvas.
Sigmar Polke’s Heraldische Blumen (Heraldic Flowers), 1996, is a rhapsody of colour, as astonishing and amorphous as the dispersion of ink in water. The vivid poured lacquer creates an entrancing and atmospheric field of colour: luminous fuchsia and frothy blue ooze across a golden background, the forms blending and yielding to one another. Atop, Polke has carefully inked two swaying trees, their surreal, simplified forms crowned with flowers, reminiscent of woodblock prints. Hovering elusively between abstraction and figuration, Heraldische Blumen presents an in-between space that confronts the viewer with a dream or hallucination, whose implicit narrative is ephemeral and indefinite. Polke’s paintings suggest a progression in time, depicting several layers of experience through
superimposition. His imagery is culled from a multitude of sources including art historical texts and illustrations, and scientific treatises; Polke was heavily influenced by the Old Masters. The titular flowers are sourced from heraldic emblems used to decorate coats of arms. As art historian Sean Rainbird writes, ‘Polke examines the picture as a whole, in which its basic components are given equal status, rather than standing in hierarchical relation. Painting, far from being a redundant practice in an era of mechanical, electronic and digital communications, is shown by Polke to be a resourceful medium, equipped to investigate the complexities of contemporary experience’ (S. Rainbird, ‘Seams and Appearances: Learning to paint with Sigmar Polke’, Sigmar Polke: Join the Dots, exh. cat., Tate, Liverpool, 1995, p. 9). Accordingly, Polke’s practice encourages time travel through paint, presenting a fusion of multi-layered and often unidentifiable imagery that suggests an oscillating universe, perpetually in a state of flux. Polke’s career is marked by reinvention and a constant search for new pictorial representation and his art suggests a world where transmutation and change are a near constant. His ravenous experiments with new chemicals culminated in the lacquer pour works, illustrated in Heraldische Blumen through a wave of intoxicating pink. Polke said, ‘I am trying to create another light, one that comes from refection. Like the celestial light, it gives the indication of new, supernatural things’ (S. Polke quoted in C. Vogel, ‘The Alchemist’s Moment: The Reclusive Mr.
Polke’, The New York Times, May 27, 2007, AR1). In Heraldische Blumen, colour and form intermingle in indescribable and fantastical ways, an experiment in alchemy, which results in radiant life blooming from the canvas.