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Lot Essay
‘A photograph - unless the art photographers have 'fashioned' it is simply the best picture I can imagine... it is perfect; it does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous and unconditional... This is something that just has to be incorporated into painting' (G. Richter quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 49).
Based on Gerhard Richter’s seminal 1989 painting of the same name, Betty, 1991, is one of twenty-five original prints created in a limited run. One of the most iconic and popular of all the artist’s artworks, the painting of Betty was painted from a photograph that Richter took of his 11 year old daughter wearing a red-flowery bath robe as she looks back at one of her father’s grey paintings. In the present work, Richter has taken this method of reproduction one step further by then photographing his painting and reproducing the image as an offset print, effectively blurring the lines between the media and closing the circle of his longstanding exploration into the relationship between painting and photography.
As Richter himself declares, the photograph is an entirely new work with certain intended deviations. Speaking of this process Richter has said ‘In the photograph, I take even more focus out of the painted image, which is already a bit out of focus, and make the picture smoother. I also subtract the materiality, the surface of the painting, and it becomes something different’ (G. Richter, quoted in R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting, New York 2002, p. 291). By then adding a frame and Plexiglas to give the altered photograph greater distance and object character, he imbues the work with its own reality so that somehow ‘It becomes an independent object’ (G. Richter, quoted in R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting, New York 2002, p. 291). The difference between Betty the print and Betty the painting is striking, not in its obvious detail but in its overall presence. The photograph of Betty assumes a naturalness that is, in fact, deceptive insofar as it is the compound result of removing the signs of painterly materiality through both the use of a brush and subsequently the lens.
Richter’s use of photography in his work critically explores the field of reproduction and is also a reaction to the marked rise in the acceptance of photography as an artistic medium and as supposed bearer of truth. He began using photographs as the starting point for his painting in 1962 and since then he has systematically been collecting photographs and newspaper cuttings. Thus emerged Atlas, a compendium of private and public photos, some of which he has used as fictive picture models for his paintings and from where he selected the photograph of Betty for his 1989 painting. Towards the end of the 1960s, Richter began inverting this method of making paintings based on photographs by making photographs based on the paintings that were themselves based on photos, a truly innovative approach to the use of photography within his oeuvre.
Betty is the third and last painting that Richter painted of his daughter Bettina and is of great personal significance to the artist. His focus on images of his family provided a contrast to the dispassionate nature of his earlier work. Despite her actual age of 21, Richter instead chose to depict an image of Betty as a young girl. Maintaining an intriguing distance, Betty is at once completely open to the viewer’s gaze yet also elusive and distant. She is resolutely looking back and yet the tension of her twisted torso strongly implies that she will soon look forward and release us from the mystery of her appearance. However, the viewer is all too aware of the impossibility of this, making our desire for her to turn around and address us all the more fervent. Part of the image’s allure is the way it captures a transitional moment, from childhood to adulthood, which is as fleeting and unstable, tense and dynamic as the girl’s pose.
Based on Gerhard Richter’s seminal 1989 painting of the same name, Betty, 1991, is one of twenty-five original prints created in a limited run. One of the most iconic and popular of all the artist’s artworks, the painting of Betty was painted from a photograph that Richter took of his 11 year old daughter wearing a red-flowery bath robe as she looks back at one of her father’s grey paintings. In the present work, Richter has taken this method of reproduction one step further by then photographing his painting and reproducing the image as an offset print, effectively blurring the lines between the media and closing the circle of his longstanding exploration into the relationship between painting and photography.
As Richter himself declares, the photograph is an entirely new work with certain intended deviations. Speaking of this process Richter has said ‘In the photograph, I take even more focus out of the painted image, which is already a bit out of focus, and make the picture smoother. I also subtract the materiality, the surface of the painting, and it becomes something different’ (G. Richter, quoted in R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting, New York 2002, p. 291). By then adding a frame and Plexiglas to give the altered photograph greater distance and object character, he imbues the work with its own reality so that somehow ‘It becomes an independent object’ (G. Richter, quoted in R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting, New York 2002, p. 291). The difference between Betty the print and Betty the painting is striking, not in its obvious detail but in its overall presence. The photograph of Betty assumes a naturalness that is, in fact, deceptive insofar as it is the compound result of removing the signs of painterly materiality through both the use of a brush and subsequently the lens.
Richter’s use of photography in his work critically explores the field of reproduction and is also a reaction to the marked rise in the acceptance of photography as an artistic medium and as supposed bearer of truth. He began using photographs as the starting point for his painting in 1962 and since then he has systematically been collecting photographs and newspaper cuttings. Thus emerged Atlas, a compendium of private and public photos, some of which he has used as fictive picture models for his paintings and from where he selected the photograph of Betty for his 1989 painting. Towards the end of the 1960s, Richter began inverting this method of making paintings based on photographs by making photographs based on the paintings that were themselves based on photos, a truly innovative approach to the use of photography within his oeuvre.
Betty is the third and last painting that Richter painted of his daughter Bettina and is of great personal significance to the artist. His focus on images of his family provided a contrast to the dispassionate nature of his earlier work. Despite her actual age of 21, Richter instead chose to depict an image of Betty as a young girl. Maintaining an intriguing distance, Betty is at once completely open to the viewer’s gaze yet also elusive and distant. She is resolutely looking back and yet the tension of her twisted torso strongly implies that she will soon look forward and release us from the mystery of her appearance. However, the viewer is all too aware of the impossibility of this, making our desire for her to turn around and address us all the more fervent. Part of the image’s allure is the way it captures a transitional moment, from childhood to adulthood, which is as fleeting and unstable, tense and dynamic as the girl’s pose.