„Entartete Kunst” [Mies van der Rohe – Barcelona Sessel MR90]

In order to understand the iconography of Marek Sobczyk’s painting, one needs to take into consideration three contexts to which the artist refers in his work. The first one is the notion of “Entartete Kunst” (degraded art), forged in the 1930’s by Nazi ideologists to name the avant-garde movements in European art which were not in line with the official German art at the time. The second context is that of Sigmar Polke’s painting from 1983, Entartete Kunst, to which Sobczyk makes a reference by introducing the text ’Detail aus „Entartete Kunst” (Eine Swastika Entwickelt)’ within the frame of the work.*

The third context is armchair Barcelona MR90, designed in 1929 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Exposition. It was to furnish the Ceremonial Hall built for the reception of the Spanish royal couple. By including this motif in his painting, Sobczyk indicates two fundamental contradictions. First of all, the construction of the armchair, which originated from the milieu of “degenerated art”, reveals the shape of swastika. Secondly, there is a dissonance between the purpose of the chair and the ideological assumptions of the designer. Whilst the aim of Bauhaus was to design for the average user, the Barcelona armchair, whose form originated from the Roman curule chair which was meant for prominent persons, was made for the elite.

The painting is very deeply rooted in art history. Its relations with Polke’s Entartete Kunst show Sobczyk’s dialogue with contemporaneity. In his work, Polke used a photograph of a crowd of people waiting to see an exhibition of degraded art. By quoting “Entartete Kunst”, both artists have built analogies to the artistic reality of their times: they refer to the condition of painting, which they see as marginalized art, pushed out by installations and practices of mechanical production.

Izabela Kopania

*  He speaks about it in: Nierozmowa (przed wystawą „Sigmar Polke Gerhard Richter” w (jednym) cudzysłowie [Kapitalizm Naturalizm*]), in: „Sigmar Polke Gerhard Richter” w (jednym) cudzysłowie [Kapitalizm Naturalizm]), Warsaw 2006, p. 7. See exhibition catalogue Polke Die drei Lügen der Malerei, Bonn 1997.