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Lot Essay
Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild offers the viewer a chance to immerse themselves into a maelstrom of energetic and expressive color. The artist's masterful command of the painterly process can clearly be seen in his universe of oil paints which are applied with a variety of techniques to achieve a rich, textural surface. The combination of brushed, scraped and skimmed layers of paint results in a multitude of translucent films of pigment that reveal a secretive inner core. This densely packed surface bustles with movement as the eye dances across the surface of the painting, drawn to a myriad of focal points buried deep with the rich kaleidoscopic of color.
In his Abstraktes Bild paintings Richter builds on 20 years of exploration of the aesthetic properties of paint to painstakingly assemble layers of paint using an array of painterly techniques. By employing squeegees and brushes, he has slowly and methodically eked out the painting's final appearance in a gradual process that he himself has likened to a chess match. Richter deliberately detaches himself, which allows him to remove emotion from the picture. "A picture like this is painted in different layers, separated by intervals of time," Richter explained, "The first layer mostly represents the background, which has a photographic, illusionistic look to it, though done without using a photograph. This first, smooth, soft-edged paint surface is like a finished picture; but after a while I decide that I understand it or have seen enough of it, and in the next stage of painting I partly destroy it, partly add to it; and so it goes on at intervals, till there is nothing more to do and the picture is finished. By then it is a Something which I understand in the same way it confronts me, as both incomprehensible and self-sufficient. An attempt to jump over my own shadow..."At that stage the whole thing looks very spontaneous. But in between there are usually long intervals of time, and those destroy a mood. It is a highly planned kind of spontaneity" (G. Richter, 1984, quoted in H.-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, trans. D. Britt, London, 1995, p. 112).
In this Abstraktes Bild, Richter adds an increased level of dynamism with the introduction of an additional layer of intervention to the paint surface by using a much harder edged implement. These striking fissions that streak across the surface augment the gentle flow of his squeegeed layers with dramatic effect. By opening up the layers in this way, Richter allows us to see much deeper and more cleanly into the heart of his painterly constructions. Rather that revealing themselves slowly, layer by layer, Richter forces these early layers of his compositions quickly to the surface, with dramatic results.
Although, Richter had been exploring ideas around abstraction since the early 1970s, it was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that he began to formalize these with the techniques that manifest themselves in Abstraktes Bild. These pictures have come to be regarded as the best of his abstraction works, as he began to use what came to be regarded as his signature squeegees to such a dominant effect. This tool would be made as wide as the canvas, loaded with paint and then dragged across the surface and it is only Richter's intimate understanding of the physical properties of paint that allowed him to produce the refined results that can be seen in the surface of this work.
This level of control first appeared in his iconic photo-paintings, where Richter choses an arbitrary subject matter that often means nothing to the viewer. In the same deliberate way that he selected sources for these works, here he has created something in which he has artificially controlled the amounts of color, the harmonious juxtapositions, to create a painting that magically inspires the viewer. Richter has disassembled the gift of communication so central to so much art. He is not allowing the viewer a glimpse of his own soul or his own heightened appreciation of life. Instead, he has deconstructed the entire process, ridiculing the idea of the painter as an alchemist or a shaman and in its place expressly revealing the extent to which he is a mere conjuror instead. In his Abstract Pictures, Richter performs the equivalent of revealing the puppeteer's invisible strings.
Abstraktes Bild constanly shifts and changes before our eyes - endlessly evocative with its infinite potential, justifying its own act of creation and Richter's own vocation. By disassembling the entire apparatus of art and then scientifically rearranging its ingredients in the form of Abstraktes Bild, Richter has created his own poetic equivalent to Frankenstein's monster -- a painting that is brash, bold and defiantly, undeniably alive.
In his Abstraktes Bild paintings Richter builds on 20 years of exploration of the aesthetic properties of paint to painstakingly assemble layers of paint using an array of painterly techniques. By employing squeegees and brushes, he has slowly and methodically eked out the painting's final appearance in a gradual process that he himself has likened to a chess match. Richter deliberately detaches himself, which allows him to remove emotion from the picture. "A picture like this is painted in different layers, separated by intervals of time," Richter explained, "The first layer mostly represents the background, which has a photographic, illusionistic look to it, though done without using a photograph. This first, smooth, soft-edged paint surface is like a finished picture; but after a while I decide that I understand it or have seen enough of it, and in the next stage of painting I partly destroy it, partly add to it; and so it goes on at intervals, till there is nothing more to do and the picture is finished. By then it is a Something which I understand in the same way it confronts me, as both incomprehensible and self-sufficient. An attempt to jump over my own shadow..."At that stage the whole thing looks very spontaneous. But in between there are usually long intervals of time, and those destroy a mood. It is a highly planned kind of spontaneity" (G. Richter, 1984, quoted in H.-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, trans. D. Britt, London, 1995, p. 112).
In this Abstraktes Bild, Richter adds an increased level of dynamism with the introduction of an additional layer of intervention to the paint surface by using a much harder edged implement. These striking fissions that streak across the surface augment the gentle flow of his squeegeed layers with dramatic effect. By opening up the layers in this way, Richter allows us to see much deeper and more cleanly into the heart of his painterly constructions. Rather that revealing themselves slowly, layer by layer, Richter forces these early layers of his compositions quickly to the surface, with dramatic results.
Although, Richter had been exploring ideas around abstraction since the early 1970s, it was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that he began to formalize these with the techniques that manifest themselves in Abstraktes Bild. These pictures have come to be regarded as the best of his abstraction works, as he began to use what came to be regarded as his signature squeegees to such a dominant effect. This tool would be made as wide as the canvas, loaded with paint and then dragged across the surface and it is only Richter's intimate understanding of the physical properties of paint that allowed him to produce the refined results that can be seen in the surface of this work.
This level of control first appeared in his iconic photo-paintings, where Richter choses an arbitrary subject matter that often means nothing to the viewer. In the same deliberate way that he selected sources for these works, here he has created something in which he has artificially controlled the amounts of color, the harmonious juxtapositions, to create a painting that magically inspires the viewer. Richter has disassembled the gift of communication so central to so much art. He is not allowing the viewer a glimpse of his own soul or his own heightened appreciation of life. Instead, he has deconstructed the entire process, ridiculing the idea of the painter as an alchemist or a shaman and in its place expressly revealing the extent to which he is a mere conjuror instead. In his Abstract Pictures, Richter performs the equivalent of revealing the puppeteer's invisible strings.
Abstraktes Bild constanly shifts and changes before our eyes - endlessly evocative with its infinite potential, justifying its own act of creation and Richter's own vocation. By disassembling the entire apparatus of art and then scientifically rearranging its ingredients in the form of Abstraktes Bild, Richter has created his own poetic equivalent to Frankenstein's monster -- a painting that is brash, bold and defiantly, undeniably alive.