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Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter Quotes

Visual Artist

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Famous Gerhard Richter Quotes

“My landscapes are not only beautiful, or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful.' By 'untruthful,' I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature. Nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless, the total antithesis of ourselves.”

KnowsWayLooksMeanBeautifulFormLostPityLandscapeParadiseSuggestionsNostalgicMindlessAntithesisNo Sympathy
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“I pursue no objectives, no systems, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don’t know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty.”

KnowsWantClearStyleConcernProgramDefinitionsObjectivesTendenciesPursueUncertaintyThemeMasteryPassiveVariationBoundlessSteersInconsistent
Book:Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting
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“Painting is the making of an analogy for something non-visual and incomprehensible - giving it form and bringing it within reach. And that is why good paintings are incomprehensible. Creating the incomprehensible has absolutely nothing to do with turning out any old bunkum, because bunkum is always comprehensible.”

GivingFormPaintingCreatingVisualsAbsolutely NothingAnalogiesWithin Reach
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“The painter sees the semblance of things and repeats it. That is, without fabricating the things himself, he fabricates their semblance; and, if that no longer recalls any object, this artificially produced semblance functions only because it is scrutinized for likeness to a familiar - that is, object-related - semblance.”

IfsObjectsPaintingFunctionFamiliarPainterRelatedRepeatsRecallsSemblanceFabricate
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“Painting is traditional but for me that doesn't mean the academy. I felt a need to paint; I love painting. It was something natural - as is listening to music or playing an instrument for some people. For this reason I searched for themes of my era and my generation. Photography offered this, so I chose it as a medium for painting.”

PeopleNeedsMeanReasonFeltNaturalGenerationsPaintingListeningPhotographyInstrumentsPaintTraditionalMediumsErasThemeListening To MusicAcademyMy Generation
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“But I have a problem with the term 'light'. I never in my life knew what to do with that. I know that people have mentioned on some occasions that 'Richter is all about light', and that 'the paintings have a special light', and I never knew what they were talking about. I was never interested in light. Light is there and you turn it on or you turn it off, with sun or without sun. I don't know what the 'problematic of light' is. I take it as a metaphor for a different quality, which is similarly difficult to describe. Good.”

PeopleKnowsDifferentProblemLightTurnsDifficultTermQualityTalkingSunSpecialPaintingMetaphorBe GoodOccasions
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“Yes, we were amazed when that happened. It was a real joke to us. Konrad Lueg and I did a Happening, and we used the phrase just for the Happening, to have a catchy name for it; and then it immediately got taken up and brought into use. There's no defence against that - and really it's no bad thing.”

ArtRealUseUsedNamesTakenHappenedHappeningsJokesPhrasesBad ThingsAmazedDefenceCatchy
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced in some papers as an exhibition opening, but the people who came didn't know that it was to be a sort of Happening. I don't think it is quite right that it has become so famous anyhow. It was just a lot of fun, and the word itself, Capitalist Realism, hit just right. But it wasn't such a big deal.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsArtBigsFunDealsPiecesPaperHappeningsStoresOpeningDepartmentCapitalistRealismPapersFurnitureBig DealExhibitionsDepartment Stores
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I originally came from Dresden, where Socialist Realism prevailed. Konrad Lueg and I came up with it, for the most part ironically, since I now live in capitalism. It was certainly 'realism', but in another form - the capitalist form, as it were. It wasn't meant that seriously. It was more a slogan for that particular Happening at a furniture store.”

ArtFormParticularHappeningsCapitalismStoresCapitalistRealismSocialistFurnitureSlogansDresden
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. ... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster.”

NeedsBelieveArtFeelingsRealityReligiousAbilityQualityPureArt IsCapacityCourtLongingDisasterIdeologyRealizationTranslateOutstandingLonging For God
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“As I see it, all of them - Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest - are only part of an Informel movement that covers a lot of other things as well. I think there's an Informel element in Beuys, as well; but it all began with Duchamp and chance, or with Mondrian, or with the Impressionists. The Informel is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism - the age of kings, or clearly formed hierarchies.”

ThinkingWellsArtAgeActionArtistChanceQualityMovementKingsElementsOppositesPainterHierarchyImpressionistsClassicism
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“A student researching into my work has actually traced the newspapers and magazines where I found theses images and has found out that many of them illustrate a collection of gruesome stories, murders and suicides which contrast with the images used. There is a contrast between the message carried by the text and that suppressed by the illustration.”

ArtStoriesUsedFoundStudentsMessagesMurderSuicideNewspapersMagazinesCollectionsContrastIllustrationThesisAtlas
Book:Gerhard Richter
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“But my motivation was more a matter of wanting to create order - to keep track of things. All those boxes full of photographs and sketches weigh you down, because they have something unfinished, incomplete, about them. So it's better to present the usable material in an orderly fashion and throw the other stuff away. That's how the Atlas came to be, and I exhibited it a few times.”

ArtMatterMotivationOrderStuffFashionMaterialsPhotographTrackBoxesIncompleteUnfinishedOrderlyAtlas
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“In the beginning I tried to accommodate everything there that was somewhere between art and garbage and that somehow seemed important to me and a pity to throw away. After a while, some sheets in the Atlas acquired another value, after all - that is, it seemed to me that they could stand on their own terms, not only under the protection of the Atlas.”

ArtImportantValuesTermProtectionPitySheetsGarbageAccommodateAtlas
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“Composition is a side issue. Its role in my selection of photographs is a negative one at best. By which I mean that the fascination of a photograph is not in its eccentric composition but in what it has to say: its information content. And, on the other hand, composition always also has its own fortuitous rightness.”

MeanArtHandsSidesRolesIssuesInformationNegativePhotographTechniqueCompositionSelectionFascinationEccentricFortuitous
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“This superficial blurring has something to do with the incapacity I have just mentioned. 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.”

ArtI CanRealityMy OwnDealsTechniqueStatementsUncertaintySuperficialTransienceIncapacityIncompleteness
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I was a student, and as such you generally rely on prior models of how to make art, but these were not satisfying. Then I discovered in photos what had been missing in paintings; namely that they make a terrific variety of statements and have great substance. That is what I wanted to convey to paintings and apply to it.”

ArtWantedMissingStudentsPaintingModelsTechniqueStatementsVarietySubstanceRelySatisfyingTerrific
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“If, while I'm painting, I distort or destroy a motif, it is not a planned or conscious act, but rather it has a different justification: I see the motif, the way I painted it, is somehow ugly or unbearable. Then I try to follow my feelings and make it attractive. And that means a process of painting, changing or destroying - for however long it takes - until I think it has improved. And I don't demand an explanation from myself as to why this is so.”

IfsThinkingWayTryingMeanLongArtDifferentFeelingsProcessPaintingDemandConsciousUglyTechniqueAttractiveExplanationDestroyingJustificationUnbearableMotifs
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“Contact with like-minded painters - a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists - and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke - matters a lot to me: it is part of the input that I need.”

NeedsMeanArtIdeasCountryMatterArtistDealsTalkingGroupsPaintingDependsContactPainterInstanceIsolationCollaborationSurroundingsInput
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“The truth... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look out of the window, then truth for me is the way nature shows itself in its various tones, colours and proportions. That's a truth and has its own correctness. This little slice of nature, and in fact any given piece of nature, represents to me an ongoing challenge, and is a model for my paintings.”

WayLooksLittlesArtFactsShowsGivenChallengesPiecesPaintingModelsWindowStructureVariousToneOrganizedColourProportionTruthfulOngoingCorrectness
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“Illusion - or rather appearance, semblance - is the theme of my life (could be theme of speech welcoming freshmen to the Academy). All that is, seems, and is visible to us because we perceive it by the reflected light of semblance. Nothing else is visible.”

ArtLightSeemsPaintingSpeechIllusionAppearanceWelcomePerceiveThemeVisibleAcademyFreshmanSemblance
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“The urge to break with a tradition is only appropriate when you're dealing with an outdated, troublesome tradition: I never really thought about that because I take the old-fashioned approach of equating tradition with value (which may be a failing). But whatever the case, positive tradition can also provoke opposition if it's too powerful, too overwhelming, too demanding. That would basically be about the human side of wanting to hold your own.”

IfsHumansMayArtValuesSidesPowerfulBreakCasesFailingPaintingApproachTraditionOppositionAppropriateUrgesOverwhelmingProvokingOld FashionedTroublesomeOutdated
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I didn't actually know what the protesters in the West really wanted. It was fantastic here, so much freedom, and that was what they were calling musty, middle-class, and fascistic, a bleak period. Bleak was what the GDR was, and it alone had adopted, almost unchanged, Nazi Germany's methods of intimidation and ideas about propaganda and the use of force.”

KnowsArtIdeasUseWantedForceClassMiddlePaintingPeriodsCallingMethodWestFantasticPropagandaGermanyMiddle ClassNaziAdoptedIntimidationBleakNazi GermanyUse Of Force
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“I think everybody starts out by seeing a few works of art and wanting to do something like them. You want to understand what you see, what is there, and you try to make a picture out of it. Later you realize that you can't represent reality at all - that what you make represents nothing but itself, and therefore is itself reality.”

ThinkingWantTryingArtRealityRealizingSeeingPaintingWorks Of Art
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“But I would like to reach the point where I could cut up an illustrated magazine at random and see to it that the parts would each become a painting. I cannot properly explain it right now. Already now I am searching for the most boring and irrelevant photo material that I can find. And I would like to get to the point soon where this determined irrelevance could be retained, in favor of something that would be covered up otherwise by artifice.”

I CanWould BeCuttingPaintingMaterialsRight NowPhotographyBoringDeterminedFavorsMagazinesCoveredIrrelevantArtificeIrrelevanceCovered Up
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art. It had no style, no composition, no judgment. It freed me from personal experience. For the first time, there was nothing to it: it was pure picture. That's why I wanted to have it, to show it - not use it as a means to painting but use painting as a means to photography.”

WayFirstsMeanArtUseShowsWantedViewsSawsStylePaintingPureJudgmentPhotographyFirst TimeConventionalNew WaysCompositionCriteriaPersonal Experiences
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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