Warhol, Richter, Polke

– Three directions

When considering modern painting, specifically painting from the late 1950s to the present, it becomes clear that Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Sigmar Polke represent three important and distinct directions. The similarities between these artists are many: all had their breakthroughs in the 1960s; all were interested in the images, materials, objects, and events of everyday life; and all produced images both figurative or abstract, or – in certain cases – a combination of both. One sees a recurrent focus on the superficial and a marked sense of contextuality throughout their collected works: the past, the present, and culture are presented in different forms; there is a distrust of – not to mention a pronounced distance from –subjective, individualistic and egocentric thought. All of these factors seem to link these artists together, especially when seen against the backdrop of the period during which they first appeared. Simply put, in the beginning of the 1960s, the art world felt it was time to abandon the preoccupation with the egocentric filter of self that had come to be associated with abstract expressionism and, to a certain extent, informal painting as well (although in some cases, the exact opposite can said, as with Henri Michaux, for example).
The culmination of abstract painting during the post-war years sated the art world, left it full and slow, and artists had to struggle to rise from their situation. This dominance that abstract art enjoyed also caused, through its apolitical stance, a vacuum during post-war history. A vacuum that must have proved especially problematic for young German painters, who in one way or another needed to incorporate their inheritance (and the tracks it had left in the present day) into their work. If this past could not be incorporated and used, it would eventually be transformed into a threatening shadow world of hidden ghosts and closet skeletons.

 
This new generation also had to find unique and individual ways in which to express themselves, and as with most forms of culture during the 1960s, they found these means of expression in the day-to-day, the simple, and – most of all – the popular. So-called neo-simplistic poetry, political literature and theatre, French cinčma verité, and American (as well as British) folk music combined with rock (Bob Dylan’s switch to electric guitar, for example) all expressed the spirit of the 1960s. In time, Andy Warhol “became” Pop Art, while Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, via a “happening”, discovered the ingenious term “Capitalistic Realism”, which represented (primarily for Richter) the liberation from Social Realism in the East that could be achieved through the meeting of Pop and Fluxus in the West.

 
So far the similarities: the influences that the spirit of the time, political movements, mass culture, and the mass media had over our consciousness during the liberating time of the ‘60s. Today, a memory, a “truth” in the process of becoming a myth. All three artists – Warhol, Richter, and Polke – also have their educational background in 20th century modernism. Therefore, it is exactly modernism’s belief in development, purity, and independence – as well as the naive subjectivity that is occasionally inherent to its individualism –that distance must be gained from. This can be seen in contrast to the young artists of today, who have grown up with Warhol as the obvious base upon which to build their perspective on the image flow present in the mass media. Artists who, through the language-oriented theory of the ‘80s, can hardly find themselves in the same dependency relationship with basic modernistic concepts that were unavoidable for the older generation. The post-modern condition today– whether it is seen as a part of modernism as a whole or not – is no longer an uprising; we are, quite simply, already in the next chapter.

 
With this common set of circumstances behind them – and with the determined intention of relating to these circumstances in some manner or other – the three painters emerge with all their particularities, all their unique characteristics. And the differences are considerable. Differences in method, technique, and temperament; as well as in thesis, focus, and tone – despite the common interest in that which is factual. And one should not forget the fact that there are one American and two Europeans – it is difficult to ignore the differences in their cultural backgrounds.

Media
Concentrating on the superficial and how objects are used in a consumer society; how everything can be copied, re-made, or enlarged; how the inherent meaning can be altered – all this lies so open and shamelessly naked in Andy Warhol’s American reality that he seems able to step right into it and collect from that which is on offer in the never-ending stream of products, images, and events. Always seen through the “eyes” of the mass media. Taking the form of advertisements, brand names, signs, paper money, designer products or magazines, television or film. When a body is depicted, as in the early “Where is your rupture?”, the image is taken from an advertisement that also points out the lack of ideal beauty. And the beauty in images depicting Liz Taylor or Elvis Presley is always constructed beauty. A thing created from gestures, poses, hairstyles, and make-up. A directed reality. There would seem to be no illusions here about beauty coming from within.

It is completely logical then, that the Mona Lisa is depicted under the same conditions, with colours added and the image repeated. The truest emblems for the exchangeable and repeatable, however, are found in Warhol’s paintings of American dollar bills. The reality he presents finds its explanation in the repetitive distancing effect of mass-produced images. These images are presented as products, clear and empty structures, and it is through just this concentration on the exterior, on the visible surface, that the beholder’s imaginative ability is first provoked and the actual mechanism behind the act of beholding or viewing is exposed.

This constructed beauty is seen again in ”Do-It-Yourself (Sailing Boats)”, a paint-by-numbers maritime piece. Here, repetition is not only unavoidable, but directly desirable. And this constructed reality is also simple enough for everyone to participate in: Do-it-yourself! A product that is the same for all. In the same manner as a Coca-Cola is the same whether consumed by the President or anyone else – a fact Warhol was quick to point out.

 
Warhol moves from the individualised style of pen and ink sketches towards a more impersonal and produced image style. First with stamps, then with silk-screen prints and film. His studio becomes a social vortex for acquaintances and colleagues alike. Naming the studio “The Factory” is logical. The act of creating, it is thought, has become the act of manufacturing. And yet, looking back at his work, one can see clear signs of a very individual consciousness. Warhol himself speaks of his social disease, of the urge to be by being seen; he gains a great deal of exposure, paradoxically enough coming across as very individual, however impersonal he also was. The flow of products – be they people or things – ultimately builds an integrated motif, a sort of vanity motif. Externally this is represented with suicides, car crashes, the electric chair, and finally the apparently unavoidable craniums. It is in connection with his ”death series” that Warhol said: ”I realised that everything I was doing must have been Death”. The words however, echo over his entire collected work. The continuation of his comment takes the form of a rather extremely cool invocation: ”But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect”.

Layers
If Warhol distances himself with the aid of the impersonal and repetitive nature of the mass-produced image, then it is the very process of painting itself that Gerhard Richter uses to keep traditional subjectivity at bay. This poses quite a paradox since, due to their factuality, his earlier subjects – taken from amateur photographers and newspaper pictures – are endowed with the characteristics of memory, past times, or a single – though impersonal – conscience: someone sees, but one can not imagine who. This effect is achieved by the blurred, transparent membrane through which Richter presents his images to varying degrees. The actual distancing can be experienced as the shadow of an unknown subjectivity.

 
Gerhard Richter’s broad body of work spans contemporary and classical motifs, news images, architecture, classical paintings, flowers, landscapes, and family portraits. His oeuvre paints a picture of (primarily) post-war Germany, from the day-to-day life found inside and outside office buildings with their typical architecture, to crime victims with varying degrees of political significance, and the motionless, simultaneously mystical and neutral, misty landscapes that seem to brood over some unknown meaning. His grey monochromes and neutral colour charts stand out as very different, factual base tones for the many faceted world of images, while at the same time constituting a sort of zero-position for the motifs of his paintings.

 
Since 1962, Richter has gathered the photographic originals into a separate and distinct work, Atlas, which has been exhibited together with his paintings. These pictures comprise an archive of both his painting and the post-war Germany that he observed. Richter himself is tight-lipped as to why he chooses certain motifs. Instead, he refers to painting as a specific form of expertise that is threatened with extinction and which is his duty to preserve. He and painting live in a relationship of mutual dependency: without it, he cannot absorb that which he sees in the flood of images of the present and the past, while at the same time he is driven to increase the area that he covers with his painting. His abstract work can seem as pieces taken from landscapes, a blazing sky by Titian, or light-coloured cloud formations, but they can also take the form of bold undertakings with chance posed as a deadly opponent. Just as in the great Bach suite, where the carefully planned application of paint encounters the scraper’s less predictable act of revelation.

The paintings in this exhibition – from Frau mit Schirm (1964), through Roccoco-Table (1964) and Stadbild D (1968) from a bird’s-eye view, to Feldweg (1987) – are connected by the actual process of painting itself, by the surface’s membrane with its characteristic layers of time (at once past times and vibrating presence). In a famous quotation (see below), Richter speaks about our thoughts and their dependence on models; the words shed some light on his choice of motifs. He describes painting as a form of hope. The painting process therefore, becomes an opposing force to the inexorable course of time (and to vanity motifs such as the cranium – so different to Warhol’s equivalent – and the candles). But strongest of all is the way the painter’s ability to concentrate characterises the painting. And the moment of concentration is always here and now.

Patterns
“Every time we describe an event, add a column of figures, or take a photograph of a tree, we create a model; without models we would know nothing about reality and we would be like animals.” (Gerhard Richter talking about his abstract paintings, exhibited at Dokumenta VI, 1982.) These general truths also link Warhol, Richter, and Polke together. While Warhol finds the vital point of the image’s concept in the character of media flow, and Richter views the world through the membrane of the painting process, Sigmar Polke seems to continually return to the pattern as a symbol and structure for how reality, or image reality should be seized. In all three cases, the artist is trying to find a model for his way of viewing things, a model that also becomes an instrument through which he can simultaneously approach the motif and distance himself from naive subjectivity. In other words, to somehow relate to the object’s factuality while at the same time finding a completely individual relation to the object at hand.

Unlike Warhol and Richter, who both find their starting point in a strictly two-dimensional world, Polke includes different materials – such as a wooden trellis, a blanket, building materials, or paint as material, in his pursuit of motifs from contemporary daily life. The matter comprising a textile is, like the pattern, an impersonal factor that we all too often take for granted. However, it is still through the tangibility of the material, structure, and pattern that we most often acquire an intimate relationship with the object. But we do not notice this. Not before the pattern appears in a context where we do not normally expect to see it – in a painting, for example. (Or, if we unexpectedly see an object that has been hidden or forgotten, perhaps as Marcel Proust, having the entire world revealed to us in the smell of a tea-drenched Madeleine).

 
However, it is still in the material and the patterns that we recognise an epoch or a culture. Through this filter Polke’s palm trees or flamingos become a kind of symbol for the welfare, leisure-life, or holiday dreams of the late 1950s or early 1960s? A Schlaraffenland that in the Welfare State of West breaks in through the veils and lace curtains of tradition, not to mention the older ornaments, such as the swastika, that have been burdened with deeper meaning throughout history. We think in patterns and we break our patterns and in the designer world around us, patterns are stored away. Meanings are also stored there. Sigmar Polke finds them, lifts them up for us to see, makes them visible and makes us surprised – even though they have been there all the time.

Personally, he does not see these motifs as disparate, but rather as a unit. In his early work, Polke is a drastic humorist, continually in pursuit of pretentious spirituality, exaggerated belief in subjectivity or spontaneity. Especially the superficial day-to-day objects with “low” prestige in cultural terms. And, in patterns and materials, he uncovers a remarkable unity as if there actually was a hidden inner truth, a truth about how we got where we are today, how history found its way to the present. In work with photographic templates or originals, he sometimes uses an enlarged screen, which could take one’s thoughts to Lichtenstein or maybe even Warhol. But the clarity in terms of handcraft in Polke’s painting provides the pattern – the screen – with a type of dignity as both opposing force and primary subject in the picture. Polke has been characterised as the elusive shadow in contemporary painting. Patterns and materials in his exuberant work maintain an exact balance between the everyday known and the foreign unknown.

Warhol, Richter, and Polke – three directions in contemporary painting. Each with his own principle for both distancing and insight – the mass media image, the painting process, and the patterns around us. Each has managed, in his own way, at the same time related and unique, to extract an individual script from time’s immeasurable world of images.

Sören Engblom, Head of Education Department, Moderna Museet