Page 44 - Studio International - February 1972

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1I Hanne Darboven
Jahrhundert in einem jahr 1971
12 Hanne Darboven
21: I-3—5-7 1967
13 Franz Erhard Walther
Vorstellung 1969
Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf

14 Franz Erhard Walther
Correlationpiece 1969

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all its discussions, is Sigmar Polke. Born in rejects the ambition, cherished by the students insights, and a narcissistic relapse into an
Silesia in 1942, he started out by trying, together as well as the artists of the 196os, of conveying infinity of tedium and kitsch. His early drawings
with Gerd Richter and Konrad Fischer-Lueg, enlightenment through ideas. No making of were brilliant watercolours, saturated with
to produce a German variant of Pop art without theories or of objects : art as an intuitive yes-or- colour; they have developed progressively in the
American imagery, which they called 'Capitalist no decision. It looks narcissistic at first direction of hasty linear movement, a nervosité
Realism'. In 1966 he exhibited large white sight, when for example a new constellation is pure without an explanation. Through the
panels bearing abstrusely false mathematical discovered spelling out the name S. Polke, or renunciation of all effect they set out only to be,
calculations, and then went over to a deliberately when he fills out the first thirty years of the and not, as before, to be formulated, to be
hamfisted version of Conceptual Art. For the biography of Leonardo (which nobody knows placeable in context.
past year, his wayward puzzle drawings of banal about) with his own; or when he lines up the A good example of the yes-no situation—you
subjects have been a centre of interest at bindings for the volumes of his still unwritten can either fall into a prepared experiential trap
exhibitions in Berlin, Basle and Cologne. The Collected Works; or puts his own photograph, or not—is a small, empty room with two wall-
trend towards drawings, collectable objects, spider-like, in the centre of a string telephone hangings. On the left, in copper letters on a
which has appeared as a result of the threat of network containing the photographs of his brown-spotted ground, is the inscription:
economic crisis, has brought him a whole series friends. But the apparent egocentricity serves 'Berlioz had been seeking in vain for a melody to
of exhibitions in avant-garde galleries; but he to express an underlying critical attitude: he fit certain words; he suddenly found himself
has yet to have definitive museum shows, nor is asserts the individual's right to humming the melody he had been looking for,
he represented in public collections. He is hard self-determination by refusing to take on trust as he came up to the surface after a dive when
to pin down; he is as resistent to verbal analysis the established and hence objectivized past bathing in the Tiber.' A kitschromantisch
as he is to emotional assault; he retreats even (Leonardo) or the laws of nature (the stars) or anecdote; but on the opposite wall, against a
from his own gifts. He resists his own social communication (the telephone); he takes quilt-like pattern, were the words : 'The Tiber
essentially playful talent; and yet he is perhaps possession of them by incorporating them afresh had been seeking in vain for a dive to fit certain
the most gifted of them all. into the framework of the ego. Together with words; it suddenly found itself humming the
With Polke there comes to the fore a Chris Kohlhöfer he has made a film about melody when the surface came to Berlioz while
representative of that hash and beat generation himself which reveals the dark, mediumistic bathing.' And suddenly, standing between the
which rejects the positivist, utilitarian thinking side of his nature, moving between hashish cliché and its distorted reflection, one is caught
which takes success as its criterion, just as it visions, the terror of insanity, sudden artistic up within the room into a mirror-image wave
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