Abstract
Focusing on Sigmar Polke’s Carl Andre in Delft (1968) and Rosemarie Trockel’s Freude (1988), the author offers a discussion of the different ways in which the two artists have parodied Delft Blue fabric. Polke applied the fabric unaltered, as a readymade, using it to refer to Carl Andre’s floor assemblages. Through parodic appropriation, he offered a critique of Minimalism—one informed by how it was received in Germany in the late 1960s. Trockel, 20 years later, parodied Polke own parody through a work constituted via machine knitting. In this instance, however, her focus is on value systems of Western High Art and how they marginalize the domestic and the feminine. Her parody of Blue Delft does not reinforce the fabric’s lack of status but instead serves as an ironic commentary on masculinist orientations in art that have underpinned a contempt for handicraft techniques such as knitting that have historically been the province of women.
Published Version
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