Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010 at Tate Modern

Supermarkets, 1976

Sigmar Polke didn't mean much to me before I went to Alibis at Tate Modern.......now he's my best friend....sort of.....

.................you know when you see an artist's work and you connect? Yes, I mean you think "I can relate to that!"...........not that, the work, necessarily, but the attitude behind it....the attitude you perceive, anyway, rightly or wrongly.............

...........since becoming a member of the bourgeois Art-loving middle-class Tate cognoscenti means free entry to shows it would have been foolish not to see Alibis twice, so I did..............partly because our first trip was ruined by the spawn of all the breeders who, because it was half-term, had decided to turn Tate Modern into one big play school..................so they ran around screaming, as children will.......as I did in the Tate, once, when I made the mistake of going on a Sunday only to find every picture obscured by a tourist who, quite obviously, was only there because it's on The Tourist Map, along with Camden Market and other must-see things like........whatever......

.......................when we joined, upon entering the Turbine Hall, I commented on the excellent industrial/ambient (if that's not a contradiction) soundtrack chosen to accompany art which I assumed was in the hall....................as we bought the card, we found out it was the workmen at the site next door where a swish new extension to the Tate is being built...............................and our sympathies were given to the unfortunate staff who had to endure it..........imagine being stuck in a Merzbow box set for 8 hours....yes, it was almost that bad......oh how we laughed at my mistake..............................

...................Sigmar Polke is funny too, isn't he? Perhaps some don't get the joke but, you know, some people don't get Cecil Taylor - what can you do? First off, the Capitalist Realism movement he founded with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer - Capitalist Realism? Good one! Forget State-dictated art-of-the-people Socialist realism, here were the fruits of the free market......the 'naive' drawings and paintings of those free enough to make jokes about both the system and the Art world - hurrah! This early work's great..........the Pop pastiches, the drawings and paintings...............especially this one........

........and Cabinet (1963)...........

....................which is a masterpiece..................

                                                                         .......then the raster dot paintings...............

............which of course look so Pop and cool...........eh, kids?................

.......on through the rooms of an artist's life............strange, isn't it, to walk through someone's life?...into the 70s ....the wall of collages mostly based around sex/porn was impressive............although it's easy to cut and paste nudes for impact, they work, mostly..........some great gelatin prints...

.......................the Watchtowers room full of his variations on the theme, done in the 80s, was a highlight.how he worked the image in different ways.............size does matter sometimes.........the dimensions matching the potentially overpowering subject..............the oppressive militaristic power............even when presented partly on a pink quilt......................that's irony for you.........

....enough....I won't go on.......you should go along if you live within reach........................or even if you're on holiday in London......just don't go when I intend to, not en masse............