Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast What Does Sigmar Polke Still Have to Teach Us?
Sep 30, 2026
Painter Emma McIntyre, known for vivid, material-driven abstractions, joins curator and writer Mark Godfrey, formerly of Tate Modern, to explore Sigmar Polke’s restless legacy. They examine toxic pigments, nuclear anxiety, apocalyptic landscapes, punk materials, printing errors, and Polke’s resistance to artistic prestige. The conversation asks how abstraction can remain politically charged while keeping painting unstable and alive.
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Polke Made Paint A Changing Historical Substance
- Polke expanded painting by questioning what paint could be made from and what a finished work could mean.
- Meteorite pigments and continuously changing materials turn paintings into histories that remain in flux.
Polke Used Abstraction Against Historical Amnesia
- Polke’s abstraction first challenged postwar Germany’s use of modernism to forget its Nazi past.
- After traveling and experimenting with photography, abstraction became a vehicle for cultural curiosity rather than historical erasure.
Toxicity Matters More Than Alchemy
- Toxicity, radiation, and waste may explain Polke’s 1980s abstraction better than the fashionable label of alchemy.
- Uranium and arsenic-linked pigments connected painting to Chernobyl, nuclear-war anxiety, and bodily danger.