Girl Friends

Artist: Sigmar Polke, German, 1941–2010
Date: 1967
Material: Offset lithograph on cardboard
made in: Germany, Europe
Classification: Prints
Collection: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Current Location: Not on view
Dimensions: image: 18 5/16 x 23 1/4 in. (46.5 x 59 cm)
sheet: 18 7/8 x 24 in. (48 x 61 cm)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Don Wolff and Museum Purchase
Rights: © The Estate of Sigmar Polke / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2013
Object Number: 110:1992

NOTES

Starting in the 1960s, Sigmar Polke appropriated newspaper and magazine images as seen in "Girl Friends." He then magnified them to reveal the underlying grid of dots created by the industrial printing process and transferred the images onto canvas or, in this case, into a lithograph. Polke’s enlargement highlighted the photomechanical printing process, challenging the distinction between commercial and fine art production. Here, the process and source image allude to the rapid influx of consumer goods and rise of American popular culture central to West German reconstruction.

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