Gerhard Richter (*1932) is a well-known abstract and figurative German painter. The New National Gallery in Berlin presents a retrospective of his works, which will be available from February 12 to May 13, 2012. I had been quite curious about this exposition and was lucky to go there today. I didn’t know much about Gerhard Richter, besides the fact that he’s quite famous, was born February 9th and now lives in Cologne. This is something I can immediately relate to, because it’s my birthday too, and I was born in Cologne… He’s one of the best known contemporary German painters, his paintings sell for millions. He had his 80th Birthday this year.
The exhibition was very impressive. It is on the ground floor of the New National Gallery, and the overall space is not extremely large, but there are many works and after about an hour I was really saturated with paintings. I had seen some advertisements for the exhibition beforehand and expected to see photorealistic works and some abstract paintings, and this is in fact what is shown, plus some other types of paintings.
In principle, I don’t like photoralistic paintings. This is because I think that painting should not try to imitate photography. If the goal is to be very realistic, why not simply take a photograph and avoid weeks of work for the painter? In painting, I prefer the element of human perception which changes and maybe distorts what is out there, to give an emotional, subjective representation of it, which may say as much about the painter as it says about the object, rather than depticting objectively accurate. Here are some examples for his photorealistic paintings:
But these works nevertheless fascinated me. First of all, they were not painted with accureately defined contour lines. Some paintings even evoked a feeling of blurred vision – like me who is short-sighted, I cannot see fine details on a distance. These pictures are similar, painted like I see when not wearing glasses, somewhat blurred. But Richter varies the degree of blurrredness, some paintings are very clear and others are more blurred. Nevertheless, even in the most blurred paintings, there is enough detail to make the objects very recognizable.
Another category were his abstract paintings, where one imagines the painter pressing oil paint out of a tube on the canvas, then spreading it with a large wooden wiper, to create the smearing of colours over the canvas. But the exhibition showed more than these categories – a very broad range of different approaches and techniques. Photorealistic paintings from very accurate to quite blurred. Abstract works from very loosely structured paintings to those consisting of myriads of differently coloured square shapes.
I especially liked this painting of Paris buildings. When one looks closely, there are only coloured stains of different grey tones from light to dark. It is only by taking a distance that the visual impression is created and the townscape becomes recognizable. I really like this kind of painting.
There were also several “glass works”. Here’s one which I found particularly intriguing – several glass panes arranged behind each other, and there must have been a mirror behind the arrangement. This created a blurred reflective image of exhibition visitors. As spectators, we became part of an art work, as if Richter had been there to paint the visitors in the blurred style…
I was left with the impression of an artist who cannot be categorized into a single genre, because there was so much variety in his works. Overall, I very much enjoyed the exposition, and I think I will go there again to have a second look. I really liked what I saw. So for me, Richter is one of the few contemporary artist I know and like. I am not sure in what ways he will influence me for the drawing course, but I feel that he might be influential in a more general way by giving me confidence that abstract painting is something I can relate to personally.
References
Webpage of the Exposition
http://www.gerhardrichterinberlin.org/index.php?id=1133&L=1
There’s also an interesting 5-minute film with some impressions from the exhibition (see Exhibition > Film on the exhibition). The voices are German, but if you ignore the tone you get a nice impression of the exhibition.
There is also a short trailer for the cinema film, see Information > Additional events > Motion picture: Gerhard Richter Painting. Some impressions about how Richter works
National Gallery – Exhibition Presentation
http://www.smb.museum/smb/kalender/details.php?objID=29733
Website of the artist: http://www.gerhard-richter.com/
very comprehensive with biography and many works, including drawings (see section ‘art’)
Wikipedia, Gerhard Richter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Richter