Art June 1991
Fool’s gold: Sigmar Polke & the alchemy of critics
Anyone looking for material to include in a time capsule of the 1980s will want to consider the catalogue of the Sigmar Polke retrospective. This show, comprising some one hundred works by the contemporary German painter, was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where it opened last November before traveling to Washington, D.C. Both the show and its deluxe four-color catalogue were the brainchild of John Caldwell, curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA, and together they epitomize certain trends in the art world of the last decade.[1]
Of the catalogue’s six essays, only one, Katharina Schmidt’s on Polke’s drawings, makes any serious attempt to analyze and evaluate the artist’s work—that is, to do what catalogue essays are supposed to do. The others are mere exercises in public relations, some of them highly...
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