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Lot Essay
This grouping represents a third of the twelve sheets that Richter produced in the run-up to the installation of 4 Glasscheiben. This important work is one of the central pieces in the Herbert Collection and represents one of the most fascinating works of Richter's oeuvre. Consisting of four panes of glass, fixed to a stand and angled so people could look through them individually, they were the artist's first explorations of the aesthetic properties of glass and the reflective surface as a metaphor for painting. The work has both a strong cerebral content, in keeping with the contemporary Conceptual Art movement, but also continues Richter's life-long fascination with painting as a form of 'window', capturing fleeting glimpses of the surrounding world.
Richter began working with the reflective and transparent properties of glass in the 1960s after feeling he had exhausted the artistic possibilities of his gray photo-paintings. In their modernist frames, he presented them as an 'alternative model' to painting with the clear planes offering an indefinite number of views of the world, without the actual possibility of ever realizing any of them. At the time Richter said he wanted the experience to be akin to 'seeing without comprehending', and as such to be the clear antithesis to that other masterful interrogation of the aesthetic possibilities of glass, Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. These three sheets that make up Studie für 4 Glasscheiben show in intimate detail Richter exploring the various possibilities of the panes when grouped in various sizes, combinations and configuration. Square or rectangular, angled or directly face on and assembled in various groups of three, five or six panels, the precision with which Richter explores the various different aesthetic effects his work is testament to the thought and precision with which he endows all of his work.
This work became an important part of his ongoing examination of the role of painting in twentieth century art as he began to think about its traditional function as either a window allowing access to another world or a mirror reflecting back a view of the world to the viewer. An enticing mix of architecture and painting, 4 Glasscheiben became a seminal work in his oeuvre which combined the German Romantics reverence for glass (and its associations as a mystical substance) and the modernist's appropriation of the material as a symbol of openness and democratic ideals.
As such, the phenomenon of reflection is a leitmotif that appears throughout Richter's work. The fleeting images seen in 4 Glasscheiben have been likened to the snatched moments captured by the photographs in Richter's early gray photo-paintings. These echoes of the human figure mutate and morph depending on the angle of the glass pane in relation to the position of the viewer. In addition it is not only the viewer that is captured, it is also the space that surrounds the viewer that is caught and broadcast back to the world. In 4 Glasscheiben , this transitory reflection is joined by the world that exists beyond the glass pane, a world normally invisible to the viewers of traditional painting. Being able to see through the work is part of Richter's attempts to re-assert the dominance of painting as the senior artistic genre.
This introduction of an additional dimension into the traditionally flat medium of painting has a long and venerable tradition in art history. The first canvas to introduce the reflective surface as a way of introducing a degree of spatial extension is Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. The curved surface of the mirror not only reflects back the wedding couple but also the things that happen beyond the picture's frame. A gaze into the round mirror shows a clear view of the couple's back but also the two witnesses who are not otherwise visible to the viewer. Indeed, this is a device later used by Diego Velzquez in his iconic portrait of the Spanish court, Las Meninas. Here too, the mirror is placed in the center of the work, reflecting back the images of a couple presumed to be the King and Queen themselves.
These three studies show Richter's fascination with this process. In these works the viewer becomes central and a necessity to complete them, even appearing as little figures in relation to the works themselves. Unlike traditional oil on canvas paintings where the image is fixed, the mobile, transparent glass surface of 4 Glasscheiben does not fix the image in a permanent state. Therefore these studies that Richter has so carefully prepared become vital documents in the process of ensuring that that final work successfully realizes what the artist is trying to achieve-a continued questioning of the nature of the image in modern society.
Richter began working with the reflective and transparent properties of glass in the 1960s after feeling he had exhausted the artistic possibilities of his gray photo-paintings. In their modernist frames, he presented them as an 'alternative model' to painting with the clear planes offering an indefinite number of views of the world, without the actual possibility of ever realizing any of them. At the time Richter said he wanted the experience to be akin to 'seeing without comprehending', and as such to be the clear antithesis to that other masterful interrogation of the aesthetic possibilities of glass, Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. These three sheets that make up Studie für 4 Glasscheiben show in intimate detail Richter exploring the various possibilities of the panes when grouped in various sizes, combinations and configuration. Square or rectangular, angled or directly face on and assembled in various groups of three, five or six panels, the precision with which Richter explores the various different aesthetic effects his work is testament to the thought and precision with which he endows all of his work.
This work became an important part of his ongoing examination of the role of painting in twentieth century art as he began to think about its traditional function as either a window allowing access to another world or a mirror reflecting back a view of the world to the viewer. An enticing mix of architecture and painting, 4 Glasscheiben became a seminal work in his oeuvre which combined the German Romantics reverence for glass (and its associations as a mystical substance) and the modernist's appropriation of the material as a symbol of openness and democratic ideals.
As such, the phenomenon of reflection is a leitmotif that appears throughout Richter's work. The fleeting images seen in 4 Glasscheiben have been likened to the snatched moments captured by the photographs in Richter's early gray photo-paintings. These echoes of the human figure mutate and morph depending on the angle of the glass pane in relation to the position of the viewer. In addition it is not only the viewer that is captured, it is also the space that surrounds the viewer that is caught and broadcast back to the world. In 4 Glasscheiben , this transitory reflection is joined by the world that exists beyond the glass pane, a world normally invisible to the viewers of traditional painting. Being able to see through the work is part of Richter's attempts to re-assert the dominance of painting as the senior artistic genre.
This introduction of an additional dimension into the traditionally flat medium of painting has a long and venerable tradition in art history. The first canvas to introduce the reflective surface as a way of introducing a degree of spatial extension is Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. The curved surface of the mirror not only reflects back the wedding couple but also the things that happen beyond the picture's frame. A gaze into the round mirror shows a clear view of the couple's back but also the two witnesses who are not otherwise visible to the viewer. Indeed, this is a device later used by Diego Velzquez in his iconic portrait of the Spanish court, Las Meninas. Here too, the mirror is placed in the center of the work, reflecting back the images of a couple presumed to be the King and Queen themselves.
These three studies show Richter's fascination with this process. In these works the viewer becomes central and a necessity to complete them, even appearing as little figures in relation to the works themselves. Unlike traditional oil on canvas paintings where the image is fixed, the mobile, transparent glass surface of 4 Glasscheiben does not fix the image in a permanent state. Therefore these studies that Richter has so carefully prepared become vital documents in the process of ensuring that that final work successfully realizes what the artist is trying to achieve-a continued questioning of the nature of the image in modern society.