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Lot Essay
Vibrating against the walls of its frame, pulsing with the creative force of centuries, Abstraktes Bild, 1981, recalls the pure optimism with which Gerhard Richter cannot help but paint. Unclassifiable in his own right, Richter the artist fuses with Richter the philosopher to compose visual symphonies of thought, clarifying certain concepts while blurring others. Through a robust practice that runs the gamut of artistic media, from painting to photography to video to sculpture, Richter perpetually mines his isolated upbringing in East Germany and subsequent encounters with art history in search of visual form for a universal antidote to the apathy of the soul.
Against a sunny and sky blue background, swirls of umber mingle with slate and spring green in luscious sweeps of paint. Heavily worked areas of impasto complement smooth expanses to evoke the same sense of sublime depth as suggested by Friedrich’s Romantic scenes: “Almost all the abstract paintings show scenarios, surroundings or landscapes that don’t exist, but they create the impression that they could exist. As though they were photographs of scenarios and regions that had never yet been seen, that could never exist” (G. Richter, quoted in “I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It: Conversation Between Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, Spring 2011” in M. Godfrey and N. Serota, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 19). Yet they do exist, in Richter’s painted world, governed partly by planned composition and the rest by happy chance. There is no better demonstration of Richter’s spontaneity than his iconic squeegee dragged across the surface to add figure to established ground. Such marks, impossible for the painter to construct by hand, invite the viewer to contemplate the strokes themselves, to wonder how forms evolve from amorphous material into the trappings of a parallel existence. “If the execution works, this is only because I partly destroy it, or because it works in spite of everything…I often find this intolerable and even impossible to accept, because, as a thinking, planning human being, it humiliates me to find out that I am so powerless…My only consolation is to tell myself that I did actually make the pictures – even though they treat me any way they like and somehow just take shape. Because it’s still up to me to determine the point at which they are finished (picture-making consists of a multitude of Yes/No decisions with a Yes to end it all)” (G. Richter, quoted in A. Borchardt-Hume, “‘Dreh Dich Nicht Um’: Don’t Turn Around: Richter’s Paintings of the Late 1980s” in ibid., p. 172).
The present picture from 1981 is such a “Yes” from the first year Richter began working in large format abstracts – the natural next step after his landmark Stroke (on Red) (1980). Having already delved into painterly interpretations of figurative photographs, Richter stretched the medium even further by working from photographs of his own abstract sketches. Blown-up and projected on the wall, Richter confronted the very essence of gestural abstraction and proceeded to paint it. Just as these works can be misunderstood, so can their titles be lost in translation – the German word bild does not necessarily refer to a “painting,” but an “image.” According to scholar Luc Lang, “Richter does not paint paintings – he paints images” (quoted in P. Osborne, “Abstract Images: Sign, Image, and Aesthetic” in Gerhard Richter, ed. B. H. D. Buchloh, Cambridge, 2009, p. 98). While visually reminiscent of the work of the Abstract Expressionists, Richter’s abstracts are less records of sentimental movement than they are footnotes to careful deliberation. Each is both a meditation on the mechanisms behind painting, a study of its component parts, and a painting in its own right. Richter simultaneously supports and undermines the postmodern characterization of painting as an archaic depiction of life in oil by using the very medium in question to challenge its own efficacy. Thus, Abstraktes Bild differs from the abstractions of Pollock and de Kooning because it is a painting about paint, rather than the painter.
The aforementioned painter, however, arrived at these conceptual notions via an unusual route. Raised in Dresden during World War II, Richter witnessed his educated father lose both strength and spirit as a Nazi soldier, and surrendered to his mother’s invocations of culture against a brutal, uncivilized world. Nietzsche, Goethe and Wagner were his teachers, an oppressive German Democratic Republic government his bully. When his first application to the Dresden Art Academy was rejected for being too involved in the bourgeoisie, Richter produced propaganda posters for Stalin’s socialist campaign and was accepted to the school’s mural program the next year. He was drawn to artists who offered an unflinching view of humanity – Durer, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Rivera – though his studies were limited to that which the GDR considered acceptable art. A visit to documenta II in 1959 punctured such a sterile environment: “At the exhibition, I was looking for realistic paintings, and hardly found anything I liked, and then I saw Pollock and Fontana – and I was shocked. They were so brazen. One had just made a cut in the canvas, the other had dripped paint on it. I was completely unprepared for that…It had an influence, in the sense that it was one more reason to leave the GDR” (G. Richter, quoted in “I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It: Conversation Between Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, Spring 2011” in M. Godfrey and N. Serota, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 20). And leave he did, taking off in 1961 for Düsseldorf, where he would meet Sigmar Polke and Blinky Palermo, all three of whom would come to represent the East to the West.
Abstraktes Bild, then, is an ambassador to the western side of the Berlin Wall, dispatched by an artist firm in his conviction that art transcends such boundaries. It is a landscape to be enjoyed and a commentary to be debated. It is a collaboration between chaos and design, indebted as much to the artist’s hand as it is to the viewer’s perception. Most of all, it is the declaration in paint of an artist who, even after the tragedy of war and separation of nations, still believes in the restorative power of art above all.
Against a sunny and sky blue background, swirls of umber mingle with slate and spring green in luscious sweeps of paint. Heavily worked areas of impasto complement smooth expanses to evoke the same sense of sublime depth as suggested by Friedrich’s Romantic scenes: “Almost all the abstract paintings show scenarios, surroundings or landscapes that don’t exist, but they create the impression that they could exist. As though they were photographs of scenarios and regions that had never yet been seen, that could never exist” (G. Richter, quoted in “I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It: Conversation Between Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, Spring 2011” in M. Godfrey and N. Serota, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 19). Yet they do exist, in Richter’s painted world, governed partly by planned composition and the rest by happy chance. There is no better demonstration of Richter’s spontaneity than his iconic squeegee dragged across the surface to add figure to established ground. Such marks, impossible for the painter to construct by hand, invite the viewer to contemplate the strokes themselves, to wonder how forms evolve from amorphous material into the trappings of a parallel existence. “If the execution works, this is only because I partly destroy it, or because it works in spite of everything…I often find this intolerable and even impossible to accept, because, as a thinking, planning human being, it humiliates me to find out that I am so powerless…My only consolation is to tell myself that I did actually make the pictures – even though they treat me any way they like and somehow just take shape. Because it’s still up to me to determine the point at which they are finished (picture-making consists of a multitude of Yes/No decisions with a Yes to end it all)” (G. Richter, quoted in A. Borchardt-Hume, “‘Dreh Dich Nicht Um’: Don’t Turn Around: Richter’s Paintings of the Late 1980s” in ibid., p. 172).
The present picture from 1981 is such a “Yes” from the first year Richter began working in large format abstracts – the natural next step after his landmark Stroke (on Red) (1980). Having already delved into painterly interpretations of figurative photographs, Richter stretched the medium even further by working from photographs of his own abstract sketches. Blown-up and projected on the wall, Richter confronted the very essence of gestural abstraction and proceeded to paint it. Just as these works can be misunderstood, so can their titles be lost in translation – the German word bild does not necessarily refer to a “painting,” but an “image.” According to scholar Luc Lang, “Richter does not paint paintings – he paints images” (quoted in P. Osborne, “Abstract Images: Sign, Image, and Aesthetic” in Gerhard Richter, ed. B. H. D. Buchloh, Cambridge, 2009, p. 98). While visually reminiscent of the work of the Abstract Expressionists, Richter’s abstracts are less records of sentimental movement than they are footnotes to careful deliberation. Each is both a meditation on the mechanisms behind painting, a study of its component parts, and a painting in its own right. Richter simultaneously supports and undermines the postmodern characterization of painting as an archaic depiction of life in oil by using the very medium in question to challenge its own efficacy. Thus, Abstraktes Bild differs from the abstractions of Pollock and de Kooning because it is a painting about paint, rather than the painter.
The aforementioned painter, however, arrived at these conceptual notions via an unusual route. Raised in Dresden during World War II, Richter witnessed his educated father lose both strength and spirit as a Nazi soldier, and surrendered to his mother’s invocations of culture against a brutal, uncivilized world. Nietzsche, Goethe and Wagner were his teachers, an oppressive German Democratic Republic government his bully. When his first application to the Dresden Art Academy was rejected for being too involved in the bourgeoisie, Richter produced propaganda posters for Stalin’s socialist campaign and was accepted to the school’s mural program the next year. He was drawn to artists who offered an unflinching view of humanity – Durer, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Rivera – though his studies were limited to that which the GDR considered acceptable art. A visit to documenta II in 1959 punctured such a sterile environment: “At the exhibition, I was looking for realistic paintings, and hardly found anything I liked, and then I saw Pollock and Fontana – and I was shocked. They were so brazen. One had just made a cut in the canvas, the other had dripped paint on it. I was completely unprepared for that…It had an influence, in the sense that it was one more reason to leave the GDR” (G. Richter, quoted in “I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It: Conversation Between Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, Spring 2011” in M. Godfrey and N. Serota, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 20). And leave he did, taking off in 1961 for Düsseldorf, where he would meet Sigmar Polke and Blinky Palermo, all three of whom would come to represent the East to the West.
Abstraktes Bild, then, is an ambassador to the western side of the Berlin Wall, dispatched by an artist firm in his conviction that art transcends such boundaries. It is a landscape to be enjoyed and a commentary to be debated. It is a collaboration between chaos and design, indebted as much to the artist’s hand as it is to the viewer’s perception. Most of all, it is the declaration in paint of an artist who, even after the tragedy of war and separation of nations, still believes in the restorative power of art above all.