Sigmar Polke

This volume brings together a rich body of work, ranging from Sigmar Polke’s (1941–2010) mass-produced tourist scenery of the 1960s to the multilayered paintings of the 1980s, and his double-sided Laterna Magica works from 1988 to 1996. During his travels, Polke had a breakthrough in his thinking about color, noting “how, for example, Hinduism explains and uses color or how Australians use color.” Katharina Schmidt, a Polke expert and contemporary of the artist, whose essay for this catalog reconstructs the specifics of Polke’s itinerary, further explores the direct relationship between his experiences and his subsequent expanded exploration of color in the later 1980s. In a new essay, J. Hoberman looks at films Polke produced during his travels, which function like sketchbooks, as the artist captured footage that sets him within the history of experimental film.