Tate Modern’s latest show feels like it’s from another planet

‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966

Who says Germans have no sense of humour? OK, so their writers tend to be a pretty gloomy bunch — but like loads of other German artists, from Otto Dix to Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke’s paintings are illuminated by a dry, mordant wit. It’s encapsulated in an early doodle called ‘Mona Lisa’ (1963), which hangs near the entrance to this hugely enjoyable retrospective — the first comprehensive survey of his eclectic, eccentric work. ‘Original value $1,000,000,’ reads the handwritten caption. ‘Now only 99c, including frame.’ That Polke’s pictures now sell for many millions (with or without frames) adds another layer of meaning to this student jape.

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Polke’s work isn’t all fun and games, but he never took himself too seriously, despite the hardships of his early life. Born in 1941, into the Third Reich, he was expelled from Silesia in 1945 when the German province was annexed by Poland. His family fled again in 1953, from East Germany to West Germany. This double displacement was traumatic, but it did wonders for his painting. Polke never seemed stuck in a particular genre. This exhibition feels like a group show by half a dozen different artists. Swastikas cast occasional shadows across his paintings, but although he’s never frivolous about the Nazis, neither is there any hand-wringing. His perspective is that of a wry observer, an outsider looking in. One of his most famous pictures is called ‘Polke as Astronaut’ (1968). He’s like a playful visitor from another planet. There’s something supremely dispassionate about his art.

After a short spell as an apprentice glass painter (leaving him with an enduring interest in transparency and distortion), Polke trained at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a powerhouse of postwar German art.