Art Bomb-8/1/2014 Sigmar Polke, Georgia O'Keeffe

Ally says:

I'm a librarian. That's what I do for a living, at least, and often people will find that out and say "what an interesting job." Now I'm not disagreeing here. It definitely beats office drone (did it), waitress (did it badly) and door to door salesman (did it briefly AND badly). But I think we need to recognize that there are much much more interesting jobs out there.

For instance, there is a guy named Magnus Schaefer who is a curatorial assistant at the MoMA and one of his jobs, right now, is to check the ripeness, sprouting and potential rot on potatoes.

Specifically on Potato House.

Potato House is exactly what it sounds like. A house built of wood and potatoes, the ripeness of which must be checked by Mr. Schaefer. It is also an installation by Sigmar Polke. As of last month I had never heard of Sigmar Polke but since the Alibis: Sigmar Polke, 1963-2010 opened at the MoMA I've been back a few times.

Sigmar Polke was a German painter and photographer. To say he had a wide range of styles would almost be an understatement. This guy did everything from potatoes to exposing paper to uranium to get this:

Pretty huh? That's what keeping uranium in a lead box in your studio can yield.  Polke's interest seemed to know no bounds either - there was very little he wouldn't find inspiration in: Alice in Wonderland, Paganini, bear baiting in South Africa, religion, homeless people in New York City, Superman in the Supermarket and his most relevant symbol - the swastika. As a resident of East Germany, Polke was well entrenched in the darkness that festers just a hair below the light; in the absurdity of that symbol and the impossibility of atonement. 

One of my favorite pieces in the collection, which I must say can be overwhelming - my husband and I managed to spend close to three hours in Alibis - was Paganini:

It recounts the tale of Paganini, the violinist who "sold his soul to the devil" for his talent. Depicted, is a dying Paganini, the devil at his bedside playing the violin for him - the notes of which morph into little swastikas as in the corner, death dressed as a clown, juggles a few skulls. It's a large piece (200 x 450 cm, 78 3/4 x 177")  - one of the largest in the exhibit.

Weaved throughout the exhibit is the sense of mischief - Polke's art comes across as a irreverent joke which you are sometimes in on - nudge, nudge, wink wink - and sometimes the butt of. And his jokes extend from the political - the horror of the Holocaust - to the ludicrous. Like a store for superheroes.

That said there is a sadness to his joke - a melancholy sort of arrested development. Polke did very few interviews before he died after a long illness - he retreated from his art, his friends and especially the public. But his work still stands as does his reputation for the impudent. Polke used his art to hold up a mirror to his own culture, humans in general and especially the art world. 

And behind that mirror, he was always the one pulling a face.



Aleathia says:

Georgia O'Keeffe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, WS on a dairy farm.  She lived there with her parents and four sisters.  Her mother and grandmother had both been artistic and taken classes, so all the girls at a young age were given instruction.  In this particular time women were expected to be somewhat artistic as they had to create the decorations seen in the home.

In 1903, the entire family moved to Virginia to escape the brutal mid-western winters.  O'Keeffe was enrolled at the Chatham Episcopal University.  Here the fashion was typical Southern Belle which included corsets, petticoats, and highly curled hair.  Georgia was different from the beginning.  She chose, in face of being excluded, to wear a simple ponytail in her hair.  She dressed in a plain suit coat or a plain white dress. She was always marching to the beat of her own drum.

When O'Keeffe turned 18 years old she moved to Chicago to live with her aunts.  She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  She had top honors in her life drawing class and had moved into the top quarter of her class after only the first term.

Georgia would not complete her studies in Chicago and in 1907 she moved to New York City and enrolled in the Students League.  She earned a scholarship under William Merritt Chase for her painting Rabbit and Copper Pot:

This scholarship allowed her to spend her summer's at Lake George which had a significant influence on her early work and her ability to find beauty in nature.  After this summer, she found herself in financial difficulty and was forced to return to Chicago.  She began to do commercial graphic design art work in which she worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week.

During these grueling hours of work, O'Keeffe contracted a severe bout of the measles which left her temporarily blind.  She was forced to give up graphic design and returned to Virginia to recover with her family and was so discouraged that she gave up painting all together.

At the urging of her sisters, Georgia enrolled in the University of Virginia in 1912 to take art classes.  Her sisters were very concerned about Georgia's lack of painting.  They encouraged her to listen to a speaker named Alon Bement.  He was an artist that pushed his students to produce original works instead of making copies of master works like most other teachers were doing.  This was known as the Dow Method.

"That which anybody can do, is not worth doing.  If your drawing is just like your neighbor's it has no value as art."--Arthur Wesley Dow

This quote would become Georgia O'Keeffe's foundation for her art work and the way she moved her career.

She would obtain a teacher's certificate and move to Amarillo, TX to teach high school art for the next two years.  In this time, she discovered the rich, beautiful canyons of Texas and spent a lot of time capturing the beauty and light.

In 1914, she moved back to New York City to study at Teacher's College at Columbia University to obtain a better teacher's certificate to obtain better teaching posts.  She later moved to South Carolina to teach there at Columbia College.

After taking this position, O'Keeffe underwent a radical and intense self-critique of her work in which she decided that all of her work was a derivative of all the teachers she had studied under and destroyed all of her paintings.  The only one to survive from the early period was the Rabbit and Copper Pot as it was in an exhibition and not with her.

In the years following this critique, O'Keeffe worked in watercolor, charcoal, and pastels:

Train at Night in the Desert, 1916 by Georgia O'Keeffe

Blue 1, 1917 by Georgia O'Keeffe

Seated Nude, 1917 by Georgia O'Keeffe

The Flag, 1918 by Georgia O'Keeffe

After the destruction of her work, O'Keeffe spent time doing expressive drawings which she sent to her good friend Anita Pollitzer in New York City for a personal viewing of her return to art.  Though O'Keeffe asked Anita not to share the work, Pollitzer took them to photographer Alfred Stieglitz at gallery 291.  He showed them in his gallery without O'Keeffe's permission.  Later when she would take a trip to the city, she would see them hanging in the gallery and demanded they be taken down.  Stieglitz convinced her to keep them up for display as well as convinced her to marry him.

With  Stieglitz's support, O'Keeffe started painting full time and began working on her now famous abstractions of nature.

East River with Sun, 1926 by Georgia O'Keeffe

The Shelton with Sunspots, 1926 by Georgia O'Keeffe

White Rose with Larkspur, 1927 by Georgia O'Keeffe

Red Hills, Lake George, 1927 by Georgia O'Keeffe

Yellow Hickory Leaves with Daisy, 1928 by Georgia O'Keeffe

In turn, she inspired Stieglitz with her simplicity and began taking her "portrait" which consisted of photographs of her face and body, hundreds of prints which he would add to for the rest of his life.

Over the years, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz would have extended periods of time apart when she would go into isolation in New Mexico to paint during the summers.  She would spend the winters in New York City with him.  After Stieglitz died in 1946, O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico permanently.  She died at the age of 98 in 1986.  She was often remarked as the most influential American female painter.  To this, she was quoted as saying she wanted to be remembered  "as a painter--just a painter".