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拍品專文
‘The epiphany occurred in 1981, when Richter began gradually to succeed in transferring the powerful gestures of the abstract sketches to larger formats, Abstraktes Bild (CR 473/1) is the first example’ (D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 250).
‘A floor full of very colourful paintings – paint, like a first in your eye, finger thick and criss-crossing everywhere, shouting and garish, as if there really were a new spirit in painting. But everything is only half as wild; with Gerhard Richter it only appears that way, it is not at all what is meant. Even now his painting is neither sloppy nor of the unreflective subjectivity like that which is circulated abroad today as “new German chic”. Richter’s chaos is calculated’ (P.M. Pickhaus, ‘Gerhard Richter. Abstrakte Bilder 1976-1981’, in Kunstforum International, April/May 1982, p. 220).
A vividly layered expanse of crimson, turquoise, green and canary yellow sweeps dramatically across the surface of Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (473-1), lyrically inscribed with a schismatic deep blue line. Painted in 1981, it is highlighted by Dietmar Elger as a work that marks an ‘epiphany’ within the artist’s oeuvre, ‘when Richter began gradually to succeed in transferring the powerful gestures of the abstract sketches to larger formats, Abstraktes Bild (CR 473/1) is the first example’ (D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 250). Situated at the dawn of Richter’s large scale free abstractions, the work departs from the artist’s previous reliance upon sketches and source imagery within his series of Abstraktes Bilder. The painting also represents an early application of the squeegee that would go on to define his later abstract practice. Swept across the lower crimson layer, the swathes and apertures left in its wake create a textured ground that is visible through the layers of paint above. Embellished with rich streaks of thick impasto, the work’s fearless dynamism is complemented by its bold, brilliant palette. Inaugurating a new, definitive era within Richter’s practice, the work was exhibited the year after its creation at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and as part of the artist’s first major touring retrospective at the Städische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, in 1986. Describing the installation at Bielefeld, the critic Peter Moritz Pickhaus wrote of ‘A floor full of very colourful paintings – paint, like a fist in your eye, finger thick and criss-crossing everywhere, shouting and garish, as if there really were a new spirit in painting. But everything is only half as wild; with Gerhard Richter it only appears that way, it is not at all what is meant. Even now his painting is neither sloppy nor of the unreflective subjectivity like that which is circulated abroad today as “new German chic”. Richter’s chaos is calculated’ (P.M. Pickhaus, ‘Gerhard Richter. Abstrakte Bilder 1976-1981’, in Kunstforum International, April/May 1982, p. 220).
The ‘new spirit in painting’ referenced in Pickhaus’ review described a renewed engagement with the medium during the early 1980s, with Richter firmly at its helm. An increased level of interest in his works was fuelled by the spread of Neo-Expressionist painterly tendencies across Germany and the United States of America at the time. Despite his apparent currency with this movement, however, his works were diametrically opposed in spirit to much of the outpouring of energy of his contemporaries. In their calculated examination of the mechanics of painting, they were the next logical step in his progress from Photorealism. After all, one of his great epiphanies had occurred when, visiting Documenta 2 in 1959, Richter had seen the abstract pictures of Lucio Fontana and Jackson Pollock and had perceived the obsolescence of figurative painting in the modern era. Initially he exorcised that revelation by creating works based on arbitrary photographs, using them as an almost silent armature that he would copy in order to continue painting. Gradually, though, he moved back towards abstraction, allowing himself to create pictures whose motifs would become slowly apparent as they evolved, brushstroke by brushstroke. The dialogue between the photo-paintings and the abstract works would become a driving force in his oeuvre: indeed, a year or so after the present work, Richter began the series of Kerzen (Candle) paintings that would subtly embody this relationship.
Richter’s Abstraktes Bilder represent one of the most significant and extensive strands of his practice, spanning multiple decades and witnessing a great deal of technical innovation. Beginning in 1976, Richter’s initial abstract output encompassed a series of small-scale works: raw, spontaneous fragments that the artist referred to as ‘sketches’. However, the artist struggled to translate these gestures onto the larger scale he desired, relying heavily on slide projections and photographs of the sketches to guide his hand. Plagued by doubt, Richter wrote to Benjamin Buchloh in 1979, mourning his inability to realise ‘an old dream of mine which I always try to make real - to paint ... like a proper painter, cleverly and beautifully organizing a surface with colour and form ... And when I do it I am convinced every time that I am on the right path and every time I see, sooner or later, that it has turned out to be nothing’ (G. Richter, letter to B. D. Buchloh, 15 May 1979). Having pursued a number of conceptually-driven series during the 1970s, including the Grey paintings and the Colour Charts, Richter found himself constantly searching for ways to legitimise his abstract work. It was not until 1981 that he was finally able to reconcile the contingency and incalculable nature of his medium, allowing him to move beyond his artistic stalemate. Looking back on this period, Richter recalls that ‘It was a long time before I realized that what I do - the desperate experimentation, all of the difficulties - is exactly what they all do: that’s the normal nature of the job. That’s painting’ (G. Richter, ‘Conversation with Jan Thorn Prikker, 1989’ in H-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London 1995, p. 206).
Following the breakthrough of the present work, Richter would go on to harness unpredictability as a central element within his abstract practice. His series of Abstraktes Bilder constitute a remarkable thesis on the relationship between chance effect and painterly intervention, and it was in the free abstractions of the 1980s that Richter was truly able to explore the full extent of this dialogue. Describing his method at this time, Richter explains, ‘A picture like this is painted in different layers, separated by intervals of time. The first layer mostly represents the background, which has a photographic, illusionistic look to it, though done without using a photograph. This first, smooth, soft-edged paint surface is like a finished picture; but after a while I decide that I understand it or have seen enough of it, and in the next stage of painting I partly destroy it, partly add to it; and so it goes on at intervals, till there is nothing more to do and the picture is finished. By then it is a Something which I understand in the same way it confronts me, as both incomprehensible and self-sufficient. An attempt to jump over my own shadow’ (G. Richter, quoted in ‘Interview with Wolfgang Pehnt, 1984’, in H-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London 1995, p. 112). In this way, Richter strikes a delicate balance between directing his paintings and allowing them to unfold of their own accord. The evolution of the work is guided by the medium itself, and it is this essential concept that was to propel Richter’s abstractions to new levels of sophistication.
‘A floor full of very colourful paintings – paint, like a first in your eye, finger thick and criss-crossing everywhere, shouting and garish, as if there really were a new spirit in painting. But everything is only half as wild; with Gerhard Richter it only appears that way, it is not at all what is meant. Even now his painting is neither sloppy nor of the unreflective subjectivity like that which is circulated abroad today as “new German chic”. Richter’s chaos is calculated’ (P.M. Pickhaus, ‘Gerhard Richter. Abstrakte Bilder 1976-1981’, in Kunstforum International, April/May 1982, p. 220).
A vividly layered expanse of crimson, turquoise, green and canary yellow sweeps dramatically across the surface of Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (473-1), lyrically inscribed with a schismatic deep blue line. Painted in 1981, it is highlighted by Dietmar Elger as a work that marks an ‘epiphany’ within the artist’s oeuvre, ‘when Richter began gradually to succeed in transferring the powerful gestures of the abstract sketches to larger formats, Abstraktes Bild (CR 473/1) is the first example’ (D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 250). Situated at the dawn of Richter’s large scale free abstractions, the work departs from the artist’s previous reliance upon sketches and source imagery within his series of Abstraktes Bilder. The painting also represents an early application of the squeegee that would go on to define his later abstract practice. Swept across the lower crimson layer, the swathes and apertures left in its wake create a textured ground that is visible through the layers of paint above. Embellished with rich streaks of thick impasto, the work’s fearless dynamism is complemented by its bold, brilliant palette. Inaugurating a new, definitive era within Richter’s practice, the work was exhibited the year after its creation at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and as part of the artist’s first major touring retrospective at the Städische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, in 1986. Describing the installation at Bielefeld, the critic Peter Moritz Pickhaus wrote of ‘A floor full of very colourful paintings – paint, like a fist in your eye, finger thick and criss-crossing everywhere, shouting and garish, as if there really were a new spirit in painting. But everything is only half as wild; with Gerhard Richter it only appears that way, it is not at all what is meant. Even now his painting is neither sloppy nor of the unreflective subjectivity like that which is circulated abroad today as “new German chic”. Richter’s chaos is calculated’ (P.M. Pickhaus, ‘Gerhard Richter. Abstrakte Bilder 1976-1981’, in Kunstforum International, April/May 1982, p. 220).
The ‘new spirit in painting’ referenced in Pickhaus’ review described a renewed engagement with the medium during the early 1980s, with Richter firmly at its helm. An increased level of interest in his works was fuelled by the spread of Neo-Expressionist painterly tendencies across Germany and the United States of America at the time. Despite his apparent currency with this movement, however, his works were diametrically opposed in spirit to much of the outpouring of energy of his contemporaries. In their calculated examination of the mechanics of painting, they were the next logical step in his progress from Photorealism. After all, one of his great epiphanies had occurred when, visiting Documenta 2 in 1959, Richter had seen the abstract pictures of Lucio Fontana and Jackson Pollock and had perceived the obsolescence of figurative painting in the modern era. Initially he exorcised that revelation by creating works based on arbitrary photographs, using them as an almost silent armature that he would copy in order to continue painting. Gradually, though, he moved back towards abstraction, allowing himself to create pictures whose motifs would become slowly apparent as they evolved, brushstroke by brushstroke. The dialogue between the photo-paintings and the abstract works would become a driving force in his oeuvre: indeed, a year or so after the present work, Richter began the series of Kerzen (Candle) paintings that would subtly embody this relationship.
Richter’s Abstraktes Bilder represent one of the most significant and extensive strands of his practice, spanning multiple decades and witnessing a great deal of technical innovation. Beginning in 1976, Richter’s initial abstract output encompassed a series of small-scale works: raw, spontaneous fragments that the artist referred to as ‘sketches’. However, the artist struggled to translate these gestures onto the larger scale he desired, relying heavily on slide projections and photographs of the sketches to guide his hand. Plagued by doubt, Richter wrote to Benjamin Buchloh in 1979, mourning his inability to realise ‘an old dream of mine which I always try to make real - to paint ... like a proper painter, cleverly and beautifully organizing a surface with colour and form ... And when I do it I am convinced every time that I am on the right path and every time I see, sooner or later, that it has turned out to be nothing’ (G. Richter, letter to B. D. Buchloh, 15 May 1979). Having pursued a number of conceptually-driven series during the 1970s, including the Grey paintings and the Colour Charts, Richter found himself constantly searching for ways to legitimise his abstract work. It was not until 1981 that he was finally able to reconcile the contingency and incalculable nature of his medium, allowing him to move beyond his artistic stalemate. Looking back on this period, Richter recalls that ‘It was a long time before I realized that what I do - the desperate experimentation, all of the difficulties - is exactly what they all do: that’s the normal nature of the job. That’s painting’ (G. Richter, ‘Conversation with Jan Thorn Prikker, 1989’ in H-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London 1995, p. 206).
Following the breakthrough of the present work, Richter would go on to harness unpredictability as a central element within his abstract practice. His series of Abstraktes Bilder constitute a remarkable thesis on the relationship between chance effect and painterly intervention, and it was in the free abstractions of the 1980s that Richter was truly able to explore the full extent of this dialogue. Describing his method at this time, Richter explains, ‘A picture like this is painted in different layers, separated by intervals of time. The first layer mostly represents the background, which has a photographic, illusionistic look to it, though done without using a photograph. This first, smooth, soft-edged paint surface is like a finished picture; but after a while I decide that I understand it or have seen enough of it, and in the next stage of painting I partly destroy it, partly add to it; and so it goes on at intervals, till there is nothing more to do and the picture is finished. By then it is a Something which I understand in the same way it confronts me, as both incomprehensible and self-sufficient. An attempt to jump over my own shadow’ (G. Richter, quoted in ‘Interview with Wolfgang Pehnt, 1984’, in H-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London 1995, p. 112). In this way, Richter strikes a delicate balance between directing his paintings and allowing them to unfold of their own accord. The evolution of the work is guided by the medium itself, and it is this essential concept that was to propel Richter’s abstractions to new levels of sophistication.