Art Metropole

#15073

Sigmar Polke: Girlfriends

Artist

Sigmar Polke

Writer

Stefan Gronert

Price

$25.95

Date

2017

Publisher

Afterall Books

Format

Monographs

ISBN

9781846381829

Size

15 × 21 cm

Length

112 pp

Genre

Criticism, Arts Writing, Contemporary Art

With Freundinnen (Girlfriends, 1965/66), Sigmar Polke took found imagery of two women and offered a compelling statement about the use, production and social function of pictures. Adopting the raster dots found in mass media reproductions, Polke’s Girlfriends foregrounds a prolific body of work crossing a broad range of media – photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture and film – and styles varying from Abstract Expressionism to Pop.

In this book, Stefan Gronert approaches Girlfriends through its technical detail and historical context, analysing Polke’s relationship to his tutors, peers and friends – especially Gerhard Richter. Considering such topics as the use of photographed material, the raster technique and the feminist discourse of the time, this illustrated study draws on a variety of critical interpretations of Polke’s work, including some material that has not previously been translated into English.