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Lot Essay
'The motifs were never picked at random: not when you think of the endless trouble I took to find photographs I could use'
(G. Richter, quoted in 'Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, 1986', in D. Britt and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, Massachusetts 1995, p. 143).
'I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn't explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted'
(G. Richter, quoted in 'Interview with Rolf Schön, 1972', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 60).
Culled from the first pages of family photographs from Atlas, Säugling auf einem Tisch (Infant on a Table), 1965, forms part of Gerhard Richter's celebrated photorealist series when he was painting directly from a diverse set of sources ranging from newspaper clippings to personal family photographs. The work was included in the important 1966 exhibition Gerd Richter at Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome alongside other photorealist portraits such as Woman Descending the Staircase, The Art Institute, Chicago, Elisabeth, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Mother and Daughter (B.), Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen, Oberhausen. Having arrived in West Germany from the East in 1961, Richter's response to the commercial imagery he encountered was to demystify his artistic process by referring to a deliberately prosaic, democratic source: the humble family snapshot. Drawing from his personal archive, Richter rendered delicate, almost feather-like horizontal brushstrokes in oil on canvas to achieve his characteristic style. Disrupting the original photographic information, the blurred image transits in and out of focus, the reductive palette of inky black, cream and elusively insubstantial grey blending into a mirage-like abstraction. Richter was deeply interested in claiming the authenticity and objectivity associated with photography for painting by striking a balance between the two mediums: to preserve painting as painting and deconstructing the notions of truth behind photography.
Richter's photorealist pictures from the 1960s, many of which draw on his personal photographic archive of family and friends from the 1940s, process the scars left in the aftermath of the war. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter's family settled in Waltersdorf in 1942 and while the artist never saw the direct effects of the war himself, he like an entire generation of German children, was deeply affected. In Säugling auf einem Tisch, Richter presents a lone child, a poignant counterpoint to the touching portrait, Tante Marianne, 1965 which depicts his maternal aunt who was tragically murdered by a Nazi-organised 'euthanasia' of the chronically or mentally ill after being committed to a mental institution from the age of 18. In Tante Marianne, she is holding the infant artist in a composition which immediately evokes iconic Christian imagery of Madonna and Child. Taking on board the deep historical dimension of the series in the context of the artist's personal family narrative, Säugling auf einem Tisch, assumes an additional resonance in the absence of mother or father. The photograph foreshadows the almost pervasive loss felt by a German children from this period. Of this Richter has said, 'it's the experience of an entire generation, the postwar generation, or even two generations that lost their fathers for all sorts of reasons - some literally, who had fallen in the war; and then there were the others, the broken, the humiliated, the ones that returned physically or mentally damaged; and then those fathers that were actually guilty of crimes' (G. Richer, quoted in 'Interview with Babette Richter, 2002', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, pp. 442-443). Richter's reimagining of the photograph in paint some twenty years later brings poignancy to a tragic existence.
At the time of Säugling auf einem Tisch's conception, Germany was only just beginning to look at its recent past in light of its rearmament due to Cold War tensions. Richter's exploration of the effects of the War through personal imagery was incredibly nuanced at the time, and indeed this connection went largely unnoticed by contemporary viewers and critics alike. His diverse series of photorealist pictures of the 1960s, refuted any sort of narrative element but as Eckhart J. Gillen notes, of Richter's more than 130 paintings based on photographs made between 1962-66 there are a few 'cuckoo's eggs' that smuggle controversial content, of which Säugling auf einem Tisch is assuredly one. The artist reinforces this element in the series saying, 'the motifs were never picked at random: not when you think of the endless trouble I took to find photographs I could use' (G. Richter, quoted in 'Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, 1986', in D. Britt and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, Massachusetts 1995, p. 143). It remains unclear whether Richter wanted his photorealist paintings to represent the way in which Germany has dealt with its history, or rather if the reference is a more subjective process of wiping out memories. What might have been historical denial in 1960s can also be seen as intimately connected to the postmodernist notion that images are just signs, arbitrary fragments of language. The effect of erasure adds to this sense of a loss of memory or communication, drawing direct associations to the way in which we picture and remember history. By not advancing the personal connections embedded in his choice of imagery, Richter allowed his paintings to be viewed as paintings first and foremost. 'At the time, it would not have suited me to make the backgrounds public', Richter explained, 'then the paintings would have been seen as engaged with contemporary issues or as social commentary. This way no one bothered me, and everything remained anonymous. Now it doesn't bother me anymore that people know it' (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2010, p. 131). Ironically, now that time has softened their political barbs, we are able to view his photorealist works with the same appreciation for their formal ingenuity as Richter originally intended.
Richter's turn to painting from photographic antecedents in the early 1960s allowed the artist to achieve an 'iconic tension' between the painting's representational qualities and its material two-dimensionality. 'As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact' (G. Richter, quoted in 'Notes, 1964-1965', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 31). Richter's representation of his sources in a grisaille palette dissociates them form their original contexts, a stylistic tendency that is reinforced by the introduction of blurriness. The complexity of reading Richter's blurry motifs also directs the viewer's attention to the artist's painterly handling of his subject. In Säugling auf einem Tisch, the central motif fades away into a gray haze, mimicking the diminishing strength of the memory. 'This superficial blurring has something to do with the incapacity [to trust reality]', Richter explained in 1972, 'I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn't explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted' (G. Richer, quoted in 'Interview with Rolf Schön, 1972', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 60).
(G. Richter, quoted in 'Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, 1986', in D. Britt and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, Massachusetts 1995, p. 143).
'I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn't explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted'
(G. Richter, quoted in 'Interview with Rolf Schön, 1972', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 60).
Culled from the first pages of family photographs from Atlas, Säugling auf einem Tisch (Infant on a Table), 1965, forms part of Gerhard Richter's celebrated photorealist series when he was painting directly from a diverse set of sources ranging from newspaper clippings to personal family photographs. The work was included in the important 1966 exhibition Gerd Richter at Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome alongside other photorealist portraits such as Woman Descending the Staircase, The Art Institute, Chicago, Elisabeth, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Mother and Daughter (B.), Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen, Oberhausen. Having arrived in West Germany from the East in 1961, Richter's response to the commercial imagery he encountered was to demystify his artistic process by referring to a deliberately prosaic, democratic source: the humble family snapshot. Drawing from his personal archive, Richter rendered delicate, almost feather-like horizontal brushstrokes in oil on canvas to achieve his characteristic style. Disrupting the original photographic information, the blurred image transits in and out of focus, the reductive palette of inky black, cream and elusively insubstantial grey blending into a mirage-like abstraction. Richter was deeply interested in claiming the authenticity and objectivity associated with photography for painting by striking a balance between the two mediums: to preserve painting as painting and deconstructing the notions of truth behind photography.
Richter's photorealist pictures from the 1960s, many of which draw on his personal photographic archive of family and friends from the 1940s, process the scars left in the aftermath of the war. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter's family settled in Waltersdorf in 1942 and while the artist never saw the direct effects of the war himself, he like an entire generation of German children, was deeply affected. In Säugling auf einem Tisch, Richter presents a lone child, a poignant counterpoint to the touching portrait, Tante Marianne, 1965 which depicts his maternal aunt who was tragically murdered by a Nazi-organised 'euthanasia' of the chronically or mentally ill after being committed to a mental institution from the age of 18. In Tante Marianne, she is holding the infant artist in a composition which immediately evokes iconic Christian imagery of Madonna and Child. Taking on board the deep historical dimension of the series in the context of the artist's personal family narrative, Säugling auf einem Tisch, assumes an additional resonance in the absence of mother or father. The photograph foreshadows the almost pervasive loss felt by a German children from this period. Of this Richter has said, 'it's the experience of an entire generation, the postwar generation, or even two generations that lost their fathers for all sorts of reasons - some literally, who had fallen in the war; and then there were the others, the broken, the humiliated, the ones that returned physically or mentally damaged; and then those fathers that were actually guilty of crimes' (G. Richer, quoted in 'Interview with Babette Richter, 2002', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, pp. 442-443). Richter's reimagining of the photograph in paint some twenty years later brings poignancy to a tragic existence.
At the time of Säugling auf einem Tisch's conception, Germany was only just beginning to look at its recent past in light of its rearmament due to Cold War tensions. Richter's exploration of the effects of the War through personal imagery was incredibly nuanced at the time, and indeed this connection went largely unnoticed by contemporary viewers and critics alike. His diverse series of photorealist pictures of the 1960s, refuted any sort of narrative element but as Eckhart J. Gillen notes, of Richter's more than 130 paintings based on photographs made between 1962-66 there are a few 'cuckoo's eggs' that smuggle controversial content, of which Säugling auf einem Tisch is assuredly one. The artist reinforces this element in the series saying, 'the motifs were never picked at random: not when you think of the endless trouble I took to find photographs I could use' (G. Richter, quoted in 'Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, 1986', in D. Britt and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, Massachusetts 1995, p. 143). It remains unclear whether Richter wanted his photorealist paintings to represent the way in which Germany has dealt with its history, or rather if the reference is a more subjective process of wiping out memories. What might have been historical denial in 1960s can also be seen as intimately connected to the postmodernist notion that images are just signs, arbitrary fragments of language. The effect of erasure adds to this sense of a loss of memory or communication, drawing direct associations to the way in which we picture and remember history. By not advancing the personal connections embedded in his choice of imagery, Richter allowed his paintings to be viewed as paintings first and foremost. 'At the time, it would not have suited me to make the backgrounds public', Richter explained, 'then the paintings would have been seen as engaged with contemporary issues or as social commentary. This way no one bothered me, and everything remained anonymous. Now it doesn't bother me anymore that people know it' (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2010, p. 131). Ironically, now that time has softened their political barbs, we are able to view his photorealist works with the same appreciation for their formal ingenuity as Richter originally intended.
Richter's turn to painting from photographic antecedents in the early 1960s allowed the artist to achieve an 'iconic tension' between the painting's representational qualities and its material two-dimensionality. 'As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact' (G. Richter, quoted in 'Notes, 1964-1965', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 31). Richter's representation of his sources in a grisaille palette dissociates them form their original contexts, a stylistic tendency that is reinforced by the introduction of blurriness. The complexity of reading Richter's blurry motifs also directs the viewer's attention to the artist's painterly handling of his subject. In Säugling auf einem Tisch, the central motif fades away into a gray haze, mimicking the diminishing strength of the memory. 'This superficial blurring has something to do with the incapacity [to trust reality]', Richter explained in 1972, 'I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn't explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted' (G. Richer, quoted in 'Interview with Rolf Schön, 1972', in D. Elger and H. Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters: 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 60).