Sigmar Polke The Dream of Menelaus Charles Wylie, Anne R. Bromberg

Sigmar Polke (born 1941) has experimented with a wide range of styles and subject matter, bringing together imagery from contradictory and unexpected sources, merging the historical and contemporary, and using a variety of different materials and techniques.

This catalogue features Polke's major four-painting cycle, "The Dream of Menelaus", one of the artist's most beautiful and challenging. Citing the story of Menelaus, the mythical Greek hero whose wife Helen's abduction started the Trojan War, Polke's cycle alludes to eternal themes of love and war with a typically elusive yet analytic beauty. Here Polke has merged classical and contemporary images to reveal unexpected parallels between mythical histories and present-day realities, all the while creating four paintings displaying his mastery of the medium.

Charles Wylie is The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art, and author of Robert Ryman and Sigmar Polke: History of Everything. Anne Bromberg is The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and South Asian Art, Dallas Museum of Art.