See the Sigmar Polke exhibition at the Tate Modern

Always at the cultural cutting edge, your author popped in to the Tate Modern on Sunday to see the Sigmar Polke exhibition, just three months into its four month run. Thankfully, such foresight meant that it wasn't quite as busy as other parts of the gallery, and there was plenty of space to see the works of the experimental German painter and photographer, whose works range from 'Capitalist Realist' responses to consumer culture in post-war West Germany, to experiments with photocopiers and colouring in pigs in blown up photographs.


One thing seemed fairly certain, Pole was clearly a man who took a lot of drugs in the 1970s, as demonstrated in room 6, where the visitor is presented with paintings of giant psychadelic mushrooms paintings and lots of cut outs of sexy pictures, but by his final years he seemed to have calmed down somewhat, with large monochrome canvases, and moody watchtowers, before in Britta's pigs, he just blows up a big photo of some Dutch peasants and colours in the pigs in pink.

It's great when the work of a talented artist who led an interesting life (Polke died in 2010) is given enough space to be seen, and the Tate has done a fine job by finding 14 rooms over which this exhibition takes place, plus four sub-rooms for films. You still have a little less than a month to go if you haven't already been.

For more, see http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/alibis-sigmar-polke-1963-2010

_{^Picture © Carsten ten Brink used under a Creative Commons license^}