Page 27 - Studio International - March 1974

weapons is launching a rear attack on a smaller, Another large canvas, A Possible System, is in relation to the complex identification system
weaker figure who, unsuspecting, is sitting at a again arranged in two parts. Hemmed inside an of the picture.
meal. Opposite this group towers an outsider, enclosure are, on the right, a group of people In the 1965/6 pictures Penck develops an
displaying what he knows is a copy of the figures turning with great emotion and (as shown on a energetic language of forms liberated from all
in conflict and making a gesture of instruction tablet they display) 'motivation' towards some compromise, and — naturally indissoluble from
with one hand. Behind him is a cross, standing fighting men, who are hacking limbs off one the new language — the courage for a thesis-like
on a hill shaped like a crowd of people, which another with axes. The group on the left is objectivity, perhaps a sort of corrected 'social
perhaps again indicates the capturing turning back towards one of the diagrams held realism'. The language as signs that Penck
(knowledge) of the outcome of the conflict — and up by a 'man of knowledge' — the opposite of the developed at that time turned against pseudo
is also reminiscent of the early pictures of fighters — who stands outside. A small realism on the one hand, and on the other
Penck's friend Georg Baslitz6. The symbolic accompanying figure is dancing with joy.7 At against the tendency, strong in the 195os,
figures conjure up certain basic attitudes and the the extreme right and left two figures flank the towards decorative self-sufficiency in tachiste
events they lead to with astonishing individual action. One of them holds a tablet announcing painting. The point of departure was, however,
clarity. 'A= me, me = B' he is worried about his identity not primarily the art situation Penck found at

Group, 1966
Oil on canvas

the time but the search for concreteness within
an abstract and mechanized society. Because of
his need for a broad basis Penck took up several
theoretical and practical disciplines as a
passionate dilettante; and he remains a
convinced amateur as an artist to this day. (Cf.
Jacob Burkhardt in his 'Force and Freedom,
Reflections on World History' written in
1868/9: 'If [the specialist] is not to forfeit his
capacity for taking a general view or even his
respect for general views, he should be an
amateur at as many points as possible, privately
at any rate, for the increase of his own
knowledge and the enrichment of his possible
standpoints. Otherwise he will remain ignorant
in any field lying outside his own speciality and
perhaps, as a man, a barbarian'.) In about 1965
Penck wrote to his friend Baselitz, 'I have moved
away from things artistic and am applying
myself to mathematics, cybernetics and
theoretical physics, for what is in my mind is a
sort of physics of human society, or society as a
(Top)
Six of 15 sheets of the serigraphic portfolio physical entity'. Cybernetics (the theory of the
End-Ur- Standart, 1972* Each 70 x 7o cm* Published processing of information, codification,
by Fred Jahn, Munich, and Michael Werner, Cologne learning systems, rules of games, etc.) came to
(Above) the fore and Penck thought the cyberneticist
Five of about 3o brush drawings, which can be Ashby 'the most spiritually productive man' of
combined in different ways, used in a film; they are
shown in two possible positions. our times. Along with such theoretical interests
Each sheet 29*5 x 42 cm. it seemed to Penck to be necessary to practise
Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne the forms of expression offered by the dance, to
play endless improvisations on the piano, to
develop a bellowing sort of singing and to write
poems. And in art itself, with its relative quality
of lasting and validity which he was presumably
conscious of all the time, he avoided
professional finesse and false exactitudes from
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