Doing The Polka With Sigmar Polke

What is a Sigmar Polke? You are first exposed to strange drawings, soon giving way to intense dotted portraits, where eyes become mere dark recesses, their superficial happiness running thin. Buildings at night that are made of melting ice cream, a supermarket full of Supermen, an office worker about to shoot himself in the head with a catapult, collages of things not disincluding porn, and a really, really big Chairman Mao’s head. Blurred, nearly ethereal photos of homeless guys. You know those times when you remember that capitalism is built on false promises? This kind of brings you to that point a bit quicker.

Polke as a drug. Pulverised Polke in a glass pipe. Probably one appropriate response to life is to take the piss. Extension of the planet system by a 10th planet: …Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Polke.” Maybe all day you see art that’s like a bunch of dots, or some random lines, or all white with the top corner painted black. Maybe a sarcastic title “Higher beings commanded: Paint the upper right corner black!” is an appropriate response.

Or maybe it says something more, like pieces without context, or without giving your viewer something to grab onto, without creating some middle ground between artist and person looking at art, where a conversation can happen, a bunch of dots is just a bunch of dots. And maybe it equally says look a bit longer, person looking at art, because you haven’t taken any risks here – you get to go move on and go home at will, so shut up and look and think a bit longer. Maybe it says neither of these things. Maybe I just snuck up and talked about abstract art a bit.

To visit the Tate’s Sigmar Polke exhibition, you must wade through all his sarcasm, wondrous depictions of materialism, other things we’re never going to get, the corruption and the weird slides and the actually a bit disturbing videos, and look at the last four paintings, opposite The Illusionist, which are like nebulae, like blizzards, supernovae and foetuses all at the same time, presented with iridescent paint and black backgrounds, and maybe some uncovered sincerity.

_Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963 - 2010 is on at the Tate Modern until 8th February. _