Post Modern Art

So for my final ever essay, I had to talk about whether art in the post modern age is still unique, in particular looking at the work of Sigmar Polke. So I thought I'd share my essay and thought process with you.

“The idea of making a painting by copying another visual source is a striking way of suggesting the end of art’s uniqueness” (Belton, 2002 p.36)

                                              

Copying visual material and incorporating it into a new work of art is not exclusively a Post-Modern concept. Throughout history, artists have taken ideas and subjects from images they have seen and used those within their own work. Appropriation of images has indeed formed a valuable part of our artistic evolution, and has shaped what we now know as Post Modern art. The suggestion that such appropriation of images is firstly a new idea, and secondly that it will signify the end of the uniqueness of art to me seems to be a profoundly ignorant statement.

When studying the field of art, copying can be and is used as a valuable tool for the art student to learn technique and style. Transcriptions are often a standard part of art education. This is because we can learn so much from the works of the past, and painting them ourselves gives a much better understanding of the technique, form and perspective that all go into making up a successful painting. This does not mean that the artwork produced is not valid however. The artwork produced can often stand in its own right as a unique and successful work of art because the artist has taken elements from an original source and mutated them, to form a new painting that is entirely original in its composition, colour choice, angles of perspective and other areas. Even if the source material is another painting or other visual material, it still makes that work unique in its own right.  Perhaps it is akin to calling siblings not unique – they share similarities and come from the same source material so to speak, so therefore they are not unique within their own right. To me, that is not a valid point of view.  By altering different elements within a work, you then make that work something new, and by definition, it becomes unique.

Looking specifically at the work of Sigmar Polke, we will see an artist that made great use of appropriation, and yet I would certainly call his works original and unique. They all have something that makes them stand out as individual works that may be similar to, but still different from the source material.

Polke, Hope Is: Wanting to Pull the Clouds 1992

 In his Hope Is: Wanting to Pull The Clouds (1992), Polke has used a layering technique:  the image on the base layer appears to be quite modern and abstract, with a landscape  very similar in colour and composition to many works by Turner, in particular Weymouth, 1811, while over the top is a drawn image taking inspiration from both early drawings by Rembrandt, as well as the more modern Pop Art comic book style of Lichtenstein.  While many of his contemporaries were shying away from images containing figures, Polke appropriated images and incorporated them creating a new orthodox of modern abstract painting. (Richler, 1997 p.213)

Turner, Weymouth, 1811

Polke initiated a series in 1973, titled Original and Forgery in which he deliberately questioned and evaluated concepts of appropriation such as copying and mimicry, copyright issues, and “the fine line between change and reinterpretation bordering on vandalism” (Bismarck, 2009) This work questioned the validity of using appropriation and explored the idea that changing an original work

 could be seen as either pastiche or parody, either paying homage to, or vandalising the original. 

Within his Liebespaar II, 1965 he takes directly from Roy Lichtenstein’s comic strip couples. He paints them with “eccentric Expressionist trimmings” (Lucie-Smith, 1995 p.34), using broad expressive brushstrokes with a very abstract feel over part of the canvas, while the figures are painted far more smoothly, with a definite illustrative, commercial feel to them.  Within this particular painting it is blatantly obvious where his inspiration and appropriation are from, yet in my opinion this does not detract from the uniqueness of it. It is still a work of art within its own right. Taken out of context of any original source material, it still appears to fit well within the genre of the time and is not a carbon copy of another’s work. 

Polke, Liebespaar II 1965

With Polke’s Alice in Wonderland, 1971 he has taken from the early Cubist works of Picasso and Braque where they utilised fabric and collage with their work, as well as the early beginnings of Pop Art in the incorporation of book illustration and commercial design.  Also within the painting is a sketched version of the classic ‘Alice’ image with the mushroom and caterpillar (Larking, 2012). Yet despite all these obvious appropriations from earlier sources, the image succeeds as an original work of art. Within this work he has utilised techniques which we now take for granted in our own work. Collage using fabric as well as paper is a very accepted form of artwork, as is using found materials and incorporating them within our own creations.  What Polke has done is use other materials, add in almost transcription like images, (the basketball player and Alice herself could be seen as being copied directly from another source), and collaged them together in a layering technique. In my mind this created an extremely unique work of art.  The drawn images overlayed on the different fabrics tie the entire artwork together and give it a sense of unity. 

Polke, Alice in Wonderland, 1971

I certainly believe that the art environment in the world today has been greatly enhanced by artists such as Sigmar Polke and his use of appropriation.  Today we have a much wider source of materials to work and draw inspiration from.  And we can ask the question forever about whether something is unique, however that then raises the second question of what is actually uniqueness?  Is it something that is very subjective, as is art itself? I think the answer to that is certainly yes.  Art is subjective, and by the very nature of it, uniqueness is subjective.  Whether you as a person find something individual and unique depends entirely on your set of personal circumstances.  The things that you have experienced within your life up until the point that you are viewing something, will determine your opinion on what you are seeing before you.  

For me personally, uniqueness is something intangible.  It is something within the picture that you find different to the ordinary, whether that is aesthetically pleasing to you or not.  I don’t believe for a moment that artists appropriating images from other sources to use within their own work means the end of art’s uniqueness.  I firmly believe that when you explore other sources, cultures and ideas, your work can only grow and improve.  I believe that when you appropriate images you then take that image and make it your own.  As an artist it is necessary to interpret what you see, and put that interpretation onto canvas.  It may be ultimately up to the viewer to interpret that image based on their personal experiences, there still remains however a unique image that only you have created. 

I think that if Polke started out with a critique of consumer society, appropriating images from pop culture to indeed show how art had lost its uniqueness,  he has ultimately ended up showing the world that despite his best intentions, art has perhaps more uniqueness now than ever before. Now we as artists have free reign to absorb other cultures and visual sources and incorporate those into our own work in order to create completely new works that take from the old and new.  Polke’s work displays multiple texts and can be seen as schizophrenic, a discontinuous and abstracted experience.  However they work inexplicably as enjoyable works of art, aesthetically pleasing, both pastiche and a parody of earlier work appropriated for his creations.  He has shown us that anything goes and art can and will retain its uniqueness even in the face of multiple attempts to prove otherwise.  As Bismarck states, “Polke’s love of experiment, of abrupt stylistic changes and of contradiction, irony and mocking distance thus remained essential to his uncategorizable and innovative art” (2009).

REFERENCE LIST

Belton, R.            2002       The World of Art   The Five Mile Press. Vic

Lucie-Smith, E.   1995       Artoday    Phaidon Press Inc. New York

Richler, M.          1997       A World of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington   Scala Publishers     Ltd.           London               

Bismarck, B.       2009       http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4671 , Oxford   University Press, accessed Nov. 21, 2012

Larking, M.          1996-2007  Sigmar Polke: Alice in Wonderland    http://www.dnp.co.jp/artscape/eng/focus/0606_02.html,   Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd, accessed Nov. 21 2012