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Gerhard Richter’s artistic explorations, which stretch over more than six decades, constitute a radical attempt to integrate representation and abstraction. Best known for his painted copies of black and white photographs rendered with a blurred effect, Richter has broadened the potentials of both photography and painting.

Born 1932 in Dresden, Germany, Richter’s childhood was affected by the rise of the Nazi regime and the traumatic events of World War II. According to some of his critics, these painful memories, combined with a regimented life in East Germany under Soviet rule, discouraged him from conveying ideological expressions through art. Such unpretentious perspective materialises in his continued focus on colour combinations and on the tangible quality of his canvases. 

Richter began his studies at the Dresden Art Academy in 1951, but disliked their dogmatic emphasis on Social Realist art. In 1961, Richter fled to West Germany where he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In this liberated, experimental environment, Richter first produced his photopaintings. 
Richter admits Pop Art gave him the license to use photography in his photopaintings. Like Warhol, he saw in photography’s mechanical recording a way to build a machine-like aesthetic that denied artistic involvement. Sourcing photographs from family albums, newspapers and magazines, Richter was interested in the photograph’s status as reproduction, as one stage removed from reality. The photopaintings function like echoes of distant worlds. This dissociation from the subject was developed in his signature blur, created by running a dry brush through the wet paint. In the photopaintings of his family, these distancing effects resonate a sense of confusion of how to make sense of their difficult history. 

Richter advanced this dissociative language in his printmaking practice. From his early editions, such as ‘Dogs’ (1965), to the 2017 Giclée print of ‘Tulips’ (1995) the artist employs the medium as an extra layer of aesthetic distance, being based off a painted image. At the same time, the print completes the work’s cycle, which started with a photographic image that was abstracted in paint and ended with the painted image returned to its photographic state.

Alongside his photopaintings, Richter has developed new possibilities for abstract art which build on his aesthetic of non-involvement. The first abstract series ‘Colour Charts’ (1966) was based on paint charts found in hardware stores and reproduce their geometric grids of colour. Later geometric abstractions used a random computer-generated selection to arrange colours by chance. One of his most intricate, ‘4096 colours’ (1974) would inform the design of Richter’s monumental stained glass windows for the south transept of the Cathedral of Cologne (2007). 

Unwilling to stick to one genre, in his ‘Works Behind Glass’ (2008-10) Richter embraced a free form abstraction. In these, poured enamel paint is squelched flat between glass sheets. Recreated as print editions, the Diasec-mounted chromogenic print on aluminium brilliantly captures the harsh flattening effects of the glass; indeed, the flattening becomes more extreme in the print as the layers of physical paint are less distinguishable.  The spectator is invited to abandon themselves to the Dionysian swirls of paint. 

The diversity of Richter’s oeuvre is remarkable, but equally extraordinary is the consistency of his vision. Throughout his work, he promotes an art that denies artistic involvement. Through this, Richter lays bare a natural beauty: from his tender and diffuse early photopaintings to the vibrant exaltation of colour in his glass paintings. 

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter’s artistic explorations, which stretch over more than six decades, constitute a radical attempt to integrate representation and abstraction. Known for his painted copies of black and white photographs rendered with a blurred effect, Richter has broadened the potentials of both photography and painting.  

Cage

Gerhard Richter’s series of six ‘Cage’ prints (P19, 2020) were based off his monumental ‘Cage Paintings’, created in 2006. For the Gagosian Gallery premiere in June 2021 they were accompanied by a recital featuring rock icon Patti Smith. “Everybody has a song which is no song at all”, said Smith. “It is a process of singing and when you sing you are where you are”. Her evocative words capture the essence of the exchange between the painting and print.

In both the paintings and the prints there is an active moment: it is the song in the process of being sung. It has its own quality and offers itself as a unique experience. If the original ‘Cage Paintings’ are monumental fields of colour, which cocoon and envelope the spectator, the small square print ‘Cage’ is intimate. Yet, the two are also profoundly linked as they both provide a visionary colour experience: in the case of the print and painting ‘Cage 6’ a texture of aqua greens, citrus yellows, black and Prussian blues.

Richter created the ‘Cage Paintings’ while listening to the experimental music of John Cage. His approach to the paintings and prints resonates central tenets of Cage’s practice, in particular the musician’s pursuit to eliminate the ego in his music. This ongoing concern, for Cage, reflected his deep interest in Buddhism and its non-dualistic philosophy that conceives the boundaries of the ego as an impediment in the experience of a unified consciousness. The notion of eliminating the artistic ego was already central to Richter’s aesthetic. In the ‘Cage Paintings’, he denied the handmade quality of traditional painting. Refusing to use a painter’s brush, which has associations of the personal touch, he fashioned his famous squeegee from a Perspex bar and a handle. This heavy apparatus allowed him to wipe paint across the canvas with a mechanical action that was almost slick. By adding further vertical or horizontal strips of colour, he eliminated the layer before it.  

Printmaking allows Richter to extend his practise and further develop his aesthetic of non-involvement since mechanically reproduced prints are further removed from the artist. In the case of ‘Cage’, the work is one stage further removed since the prints are based on photographs of the original painting. While this technique, with its effacement of individuality, reflects the idea of the ego as an impediment, Richter’s fields of shimmering colour could be equated to the spiritual concept of an elevated state of balance. 

In both its painted and printed form, ‘Cage’ is a series that incorporates dynamic bodily movement and an emotive contemplation of colour. In an attempt to create works that can truly exist autonomously, entirely removed from the artist’s ego, Richter has produced images of intense philosophical and sensorial weight. 

Gerhard Richter’s series of six ‘Cage’ prints (P19, 2020) were based off his monumental ‘Cage Paintings’, created in 2006. For the Gagosian Gallery premiere in June 2021 they were accompanied by a recital featuring rock icon Patti Smith. “Everybody has a song which is no song at all”, said Smith. “It is a process of singing and when you sing you are where you are”. Her evocative words capture the essence of the exchange between the painting and print.

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter

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