000			01996nam a2200169Ia 4500
001			5850
008			250915s9999 xx 000 0 und d
020			_a9781935202615
245		0	_aSigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries, The 1970s/ _cEdited by Petra Lange-Berndt; Dietmar Rubel
260			_bVerlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Koln; Distribued Art Publishers, NY; The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Bonn; D.A.P. NY _c2011
300			_a540p; _c27x22cm
520			_aIn the postwar dawn of late capitalism, options for political address in painting seemed to polarize themselves into, on one hand, the cool critiques of image truth found in the art of Gerhard Richter or Andy Warhol--and on the other, the decidedly hotter and messier rhetoric of a Sigmar Polke. Polke's energetically sprawling painting traversed many idioms, and its anarchic character expressed the ascent of a new leftism in western Germany. Perhaps the supreme instance of Polke's political art is We Petty Bourgeois!, the ambitious series at the heart of this volume. Made between 1974 and 1976, and loosely based on Hans Magnus Enzensberger's 1976 essay “On the Inevitability of the Middle Class,” it consists of ten large-scale canvas-mounted works on paper, reproduced here in foldout color plates, in which densely inscribed layers of figures, traceries, sigils and quotation derived from the pop culture of the era narrate an epic vision of the scars and aspirations of postwar Europe. Hippie culture, terrorism, the first gleamings of punk, the women's movement, leftist tracts, imagery from underground comics and ethnographic studies all parade across Polke's chaotic picture planes. This beautifully produced volume recuperates this series and Polke's art of the 1970s in an energetic compendium of paintings, collages, photographs and archival materials.
546			_aEnglish
650			_aN8350-8356 Art as a profession. Artists _98229
700			_aPolke, Sigmar _98230
942			_cBK
999			_c5850 _d5850