Watchtower with Geese (Hochsitz mit Gänsen)

Sigmar PolkeWW-1987-049011

1987·Resin and acrylic paint on various fabrics·290 × 290 cm (114 1/4 × 114 1/4 in.)

<p>Sigmar Polke was born in Silesia (present-day Poland), which became part of East Germany after World War II. He moved to West Germany in the 1960s, becoming one of a number of German artists who sought to confront the collective trauma that characterized the history of their nation in the 20th century. The watchtower referred to in the title may indicate a type of elevated seat frequently used in the German countryside as a lookout when hunting fowl, a reference underscored by a gaggle of geese in the painting’s right-hand corner. The designs on the black fabric evoke the pleasures of leisure time at a beach and provide an association with another kind of raised chair, that of a lifeguard. But, more ominously, the watchtower is also related to guard towers, prisons, concentration camps, and walled countries.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1987
Medium: Resin and acrylic paint on various fabrics
Dimensions: 290 × 290 cm (114 1/4 × 114 1/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Sigmar Polke

Artist

Sigmar Polke

Photography

Sigmar Polke’s wildly inventive practice helped pioneer new approaches to painting and photography in the post-war era. Polke was both materially inventive and conceptually oriented: He used a variety of photographic printing techniques and chemical processes and worked in a vein he called Capitalist Realism, which took an ironic perspective on consumerism. To this end, he often incorporated pop cultural and advertising iconography into his work. Polke has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zürich, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He participated in the São Paulo Bienal and the Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion in 1986 for his presentation at the West German pavilion. Polke was awarded the Erasmus Prize, the Carnegie Prize, and the Praemium Imperiale, among other honors. The artist also worked in printmaking, film, performance, and sculpture.

Oleśnica, Poland

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