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Lot Essay
Proliferating with myriad colors of vibrant mauve, magenta, rose pink and cyan blue in broad and smoothly textured brush strokes, Farbschlieren, marks an important threshold in Gerhard Richter's practice. Dating from 1968, it embodies the artist's constructive, conceptual turn when he was fundamentally questioning the viability of painting, the morphology of the brushstroke and the supposed polarity of abstraction and figuration. Exceptionally rare, unique in its composition and very early in the context of Richter's color abstractions, the work is integral to the development of his intuitive Abstrakte Bilder. In Farbschlieren Richter freely employs the paint brush, marrying color in a chance manner and it is this highly contingent technique that was to became amplified with his use of the squeegee in the celebrated Abstrakte Bilder from the late 1980s onwards.
Until 1967, photorealist paintings had essentially dominated Richter's oeuvre, the artist faithfully translating photographic images into paint. In the final years of the decade however, Richter began to explore diverse avenues creating Color Charts, Inpaintings, Details, Curtains, Doors and the sculptural installation Four Panes of Glass. In his Curtains and Doors series, the artist carried out trompe-l'oeil paintings of rippled drapes and rows of doors ajar; these were the first paintings Richter had ever carried out without an original photographic source image. Looking back at these collected works in 1971, the artist wrote: "perhaps the Doors , Curtains, Surface Pictures, Panes of Glass, etc. are metaphors of despair, prompted by the dilemma that our sense of sight causes us to apprehend things, but at the same time restricts and partly precludes our apprehension of reality" (G. Richter quoted in R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York 2002, p. 49).
This concern with the perception of reality underlies Richter's approach in Farbschlieren, where the artist takes the brushstroke to the extreme edge of association, denying the viewer any easy figurative relationship. In doing so, he was entering a dialogue with prevailing avant-garde artists such as Carl Andre, Laurence Wiener, Hanne Darboven, Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra, who were then arriving on the Düsseldorf scene, sponsored by gallerists such as Konrad Fischer and Heiner Friedrich. For Richter, rather than eschewing painting, the ambition was to explore the continued possibilities and relevance of the medium. As he recalls, "I just went on painting. But I clearly remember that this anti-painting mood did exist. At the end of the 1960s the art scene underwent its great politicization. Painting was taboo, because it had no 'social relevance' and was therefore a bourgeois thing (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, A Life in Painting, Cologne, 2002, p. 153).
In each of the series undertaken by Richter at this time, the artist was illuminating the continuities between image-based and abstract painting. This was something he had emphasized as early as 1962 in Table; a perfectly realized designer table effaced by swirls of grey paint. Indeed in his Townscapes, begun in 1968, Richter was exploring the legibility of an image, distorting each successive work in the series with increasing freedom and abandon. It is out of this process of experimentation that Richter was to undertake Farbschlieren with its spectacular bravura of brushstrokes and lyrical play of color. As the artist once explained, in Farbschlieren he was creating 'artificial jungles' in the painted interweaves; the direct counterparts to the 'natural jungles' of his contemporary landscape paintings. This is perhaps most apparent in Richter's near-sublime Cloud Paintings with their diaphanous veils of paint which oscillate between figuration and abstraction, dissolving into an assembly of tones and smooth textures. As Friedel has suggested, these romanticizing paintings can be understood as "naturalistic twins to the abstract paint streaks" (H. Friedel, 'Gerhard Richter's Palette Paintings: Red/Yellow/Blue - The BMW Paintings,' Gerhard Richter Red/Yellow/Blue, Munich, 2007, p. 13).
Created out of continuously interlacing lines and swirling tracks of paint, Farbschlieren recalls the free compositions of Jackson Pollock whose work Richter had encountered at Documenta in 1959. Unlike his American counterpart however, the artist fundamentally eschewed any expressive content in his painting. As he once described, in Farbschlieren "the different hues and forms develop with the continual movement of the brush, bringing forth an 'illusive' spatiality without my having to invent forms and signs: the brush moves along a given path from color spot to color spot, first mediating, then more or less destroying, and mingling until there is nothing left untouched, until there is almost a hodgepodge, an equal expanse of interwoven form, space, and color. The paintings develop in the process of making, they are not creations and not creative in the sense of that deceitful term" (G. Richter quoted in R. Nasgaard, Gerhard Richter: Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1988, p. 78).
Until 1967, photorealist paintings had essentially dominated Richter's oeuvre, the artist faithfully translating photographic images into paint. In the final years of the decade however, Richter began to explore diverse avenues creating Color Charts, Inpaintings, Details, Curtains, Doors and the sculptural installation Four Panes of Glass. In his Curtains and Doors series, the artist carried out trompe-l'oeil paintings of rippled drapes and rows of doors ajar; these were the first paintings Richter had ever carried out without an original photographic source image. Looking back at these collected works in 1971, the artist wrote: "perhaps the Doors , Curtains, Surface Pictures, Panes of Glass, etc. are metaphors of despair, prompted by the dilemma that our sense of sight causes us to apprehend things, but at the same time restricts and partly precludes our apprehension of reality" (G. Richter quoted in R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York 2002, p. 49).
This concern with the perception of reality underlies Richter's approach in Farbschlieren, where the artist takes the brushstroke to the extreme edge of association, denying the viewer any easy figurative relationship. In doing so, he was entering a dialogue with prevailing avant-garde artists such as Carl Andre, Laurence Wiener, Hanne Darboven, Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra, who were then arriving on the Düsseldorf scene, sponsored by gallerists such as Konrad Fischer and Heiner Friedrich. For Richter, rather than eschewing painting, the ambition was to explore the continued possibilities and relevance of the medium. As he recalls, "I just went on painting. But I clearly remember that this anti-painting mood did exist. At the end of the 1960s the art scene underwent its great politicization. Painting was taboo, because it had no 'social relevance' and was therefore a bourgeois thing (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, A Life in Painting, Cologne, 2002, p. 153).
In each of the series undertaken by Richter at this time, the artist was illuminating the continuities between image-based and abstract painting. This was something he had emphasized as early as 1962 in Table; a perfectly realized designer table effaced by swirls of grey paint. Indeed in his Townscapes, begun in 1968, Richter was exploring the legibility of an image, distorting each successive work in the series with increasing freedom and abandon. It is out of this process of experimentation that Richter was to undertake Farbschlieren with its spectacular bravura of brushstrokes and lyrical play of color. As the artist once explained, in Farbschlieren he was creating 'artificial jungles' in the painted interweaves; the direct counterparts to the 'natural jungles' of his contemporary landscape paintings. This is perhaps most apparent in Richter's near-sublime Cloud Paintings with their diaphanous veils of paint which oscillate between figuration and abstraction, dissolving into an assembly of tones and smooth textures. As Friedel has suggested, these romanticizing paintings can be understood as "naturalistic twins to the abstract paint streaks" (H. Friedel, 'Gerhard Richter's Palette Paintings: Red/Yellow/Blue - The BMW Paintings,' Gerhard Richter Red/Yellow/Blue, Munich, 2007, p. 13).
Created out of continuously interlacing lines and swirling tracks of paint, Farbschlieren recalls the free compositions of Jackson Pollock whose work Richter had encountered at Documenta in 1959. Unlike his American counterpart however, the artist fundamentally eschewed any expressive content in his painting. As he once described, in Farbschlieren "the different hues and forms develop with the continual movement of the brush, bringing forth an 'illusive' spatiality without my having to invent forms and signs: the brush moves along a given path from color spot to color spot, first mediating, then more or less destroying, and mingling until there is nothing left untouched, until there is almost a hodgepodge, an equal expanse of interwoven form, space, and color. The paintings develop in the process of making, they are not creations and not creative in the sense of that deceitful term" (G. Richter quoted in R. Nasgaard, Gerhard Richter: Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1988, p. 78).