Chocolate Painting (Schokoladenbild)
This work, painted while Polke was still a student, demonstrates the strong influence Pop art had over the artist in his formative years. Since Pop art had not become a phenomenon in Germany at that point, Polke's exposure to it was mostly via its dissemination in art magazines and newspapers. However, while American Pop was primarily concerned with brands and consumer goods, Polke instead chose to represent an unbranded chocolate bar that had already been opened, implying a different and perhaps a more subtle sensibility to that found in Andy Warhol's iconic and untouched Campbell's soup cans, for example.
Having escaped from post-war communist East Germany to the West, Polke always viewed the commodities of capitalism in contrast to his own personal knowledge of the restrictions of communism. He once claimed, "When I came to the West, I saw many, many things for the first time. But I also saw the prosperity of the West critically. It wasn't really Heaven." This dual criticism of capitalism and communism came to the fore in the Capitalist Realist group he co-launched the year before this work was executed.
The Capitalist Realists mocked the Socialist Realist style of art endorsed by the Soviet Union, which dominated the art of many communist countries. Typically, Socialist Realism was openly nationalistic. Most often, art produced in this style - the only art sanctioned by the state - emphasized loyalty to the communist party and featured content that promoted party ideology. Polke exposes the bright idealism of Socialist Realism as well as Western consumerism in this work. Chocolate Painting is a confluence of seemingly opposing ideologies: this chocolate bar, sans label, becomes a sort of signifier for banality, uniformity, and uncritical consumption. It mocks the sometimes sickeningly sweet imagery of Socialist Realism and blurs the line between the consumer and the ideology of consumption.
