Output details

We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries. Documentation of an Exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle

Portfolio: This output is a curatorial project consisting of three exhibitions and two books. It includes the following components:

1. Exhibition and Co-edited book Sigmar Polke: We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries. The 1970s, Kunsthalle Hamburg, 2009.

2. Co-edited book We Petty Bourgeois! Comrades and Contemporaries. Documentation of an Exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Documents the three exhibitions with installation photographs and further description.

3. Two dossiers published by the Hamburger Kunsthalle, comprising data on press.

Based on three years of research, the aim of this curatorial project was to redefine Polke as an artist and shed light on a whole decade – the 1970s – that had been absent from the art historical reception. The first exhibition coincided with the publication of the German version of this volume. The exhibitions had an experimental format: a central ensemble of ten large-scale gouaches from the 1970s, that had not been on show for over 30 years and completely unknown, were placed at the center of the show. This core of works was then reframed three times under different headings and with different works under the titles Clique, Pop and Politics. The project emphasised how the artist worked collectively with his company of likeminded people in an open house in the countryside near Düsseldorf and displayed work by Katharina Sieverding, Candida Höfer, and Memphis Schulze. The experimental format of the show was documented in a second publication with new information that had surfaced during the process of the three exhibitions incorporated into the English translation of the book. The exhibition included the screening of 16mm-films that Polke had especially edited for the curators just before he died and won the ‘Exhibition of the Year’ award by the International Association of Art Critics (German section).