Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke: The alchemist of German painting wields a magic wand and lenticular screen Sigmar Polke, born in 1941, is one of the most important artists of his generation and is considered the magician, the alchemist among painters. On the occasion of the presentation of the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen in 2007, he staged an exhibition with the new block of works, the so-called "Lens Pictures". With the lens pictures, after the grids and transparent picture carriers, he draws another optical layer or surface of perception into the painting. The corrugated surface of the lenticular screen acts as a viewing surface that distorts the underlying image because the corrugated surface refracts light in different directions. The technically manufactured lenticular grid, as known from flip pictures, has an amazing 3D effect. However, Polke does not imitate the hyper-illusion of the technical image, but calculates with the inaccuracy and defectiveness of "his" lens grid and the specific aesthetic quality. This book is dedicated to lens images. The peculiarity lies in the fact that the artist collaborated on the layout and the sequence of images and published status reports of important paintings. It is precisely in this processual view of the works that it becomes clear which levels are important for the artist when viewing them