Sigmar Polke

Alibis
retrospective at Tate Modern

Cynicism in relation to materialistic society + ongoing experimentation with materials and processes.

Over the decades (1963 - 2007) the work acquires inner weight and depth. The cynicism becomes relentless probing, the experimentation more extreme.  Comes together in The Watchtower series of 1984-88 - the resonances of the image, the use e.g. of continually deteriorating photographic chemicals which mean the painting becomes more and more obscure.  Often used toxic and banned substances.

Sfumato series shown in 1990 is a form of writing with light - soot from an oil lantern swirled over glass.

Making canvas translucent with resin.

The Illusionist shown in 2007 is covered with gel raked into ridges which acts as a distorting lens, adding to the confusion and complexity of the images beneath. We are forced to question the nature of what we see both in a material sense and in terms of the subject of the painting; the artist as illusionist.

Why 'Alibis'?

Malevich

Exhibition at Tate Modern

In the suprematist paintings:
instability - 'toppling' piles of shapes; the eye being forced to shift focus (what is the focus?); counterpooising of shapes; directionality
depth - shape of planes indicates recession; power of colours in relation to one another; white background - infinite; contrasting areas of dynamic; relative size of shapes

The term suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on visual depiction of objects. (M's words in italics)

White planes in dissolution, 1917-18 - the dissolution as he thought then of of himself as painter and of painting itself.

Christopher Wool

Saw a painting of his at ICA's Beware Wet Paint show and responded to the calligraphic like marks and the way they appear to float over the surface.  Discovered that his main work involves stencilled text.  Works like this painting seem to break free from that.

Anselm Kiefer

Retrospective at Royal Academy
What struck me most was his ability to 'hold it all together' - to have immense complexity playing itself out across a canvas, every square centimetre rich in detail, but all resolved into a working whole.

The power of work in vitrines - the extra depth of field, the focus

Also the use of text:

• the casual scrawling across a painting of words, usually a line of poetry, but lost on the viewer unless they understand German and are familiar with its literature
• incorporation of text e.g. into the furrows of Black Flakes.
• the image of the lead book (lead the most mutable of the metals)
• in The Rhine the partial obscuring of text, whitewashing, collaging

An interview with Anselm Kiefer, ahead of his Royal Academy show – Financial Times

Inside Anselm Kiefer's astonishing 200-acre art studio – The Guardian

Anselm Kiefer, Royal Academy, preview: Is he our greatest living artist? – The Independent