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Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007

Book by Gerhard Richter · 29 quotes · Art, Painting, Thinking

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Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007 Quotes

“Of course I constantly despair at my own incapacity, at the impossibility of ever accomplishing anything, of painting a valid, true picture or even knowing what such a thing ought to look like. But then I always have the hope that, if I persevere, it might one day happen. And this hope is nurtured every time something appears, a scattered, partial, initial hint of something which reminds me of what I long for, or which conveys a hint of it – although often enough I have been fooled by a momentary glimpse that then vanishes, leaving behind only the usual thing.”

IfsLooksLongHas BeensEnoughMightHappensCoursesMy OwnBehindsKnowingPaintingOughtOne DayDespairLeavingUsualGlimpseImpossibilityInitialsPersevereHintsFooledMomentaryIncapacityAccomplishing Anything
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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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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“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
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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
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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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“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 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
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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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“Perhaps the choice is a negative one, in that I was trying to avoid everything that touched on well-known issues - or any issues at all, whether painterly, social or aesthetic. I tried to find nothing too explicit, hence all the banal subjects; and then, again, I tried to avoid letting the banal turn into my issue and my trademark. So it's all evasive action, in a way.”

WayTryingWellsArtActionTurnsChoicesSocialKnownIssuesSubjectsPaintingNegativeTouchedAestheticWell KnownExplicitTrademarks
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I've never found anything to be lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can see many more things in it than in a sharply focused image. A landscape painted with exactness forces you to see a determined number of clearly differentiated trees, while in a blurry canvas you can perceive as many trees as you want. The painting is more open.”

WantArtFoundForceNumbersTreePaintingDeterminedFocusedContraryLandscapePerceiveCanvasLackingExactnessBlurry
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“Of course, pictures of objects also have this transcendental side to them. Every object, being part of an ultimately incomprehensible world, also embodies that world; when represented in a picture, the object conveys this mystery all the more powerfully, the less of a 'function' the picture has. Hence, for instance, the growing fascination of many beautiful old portraits.”

WorldArtBeautifulCoursesSidesGrowingMysteryObjectsPaintingFunctionInstancePortraitsFascinationTranscendental
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“... landscapes or still-lifes I paint in between the abstract works; they constitute about one-tenth of my production. On the one hand they are useful, because I like to work from nature - although I do use a photograph - because I think that any detail from nature has a logic I would like to see in abstraction as well.”

ThinkingWellsArtStillsUseHandsPaintingLogicPaintPhotographProductionsDetailsLandscapeAbstractAbstraction
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“The grey paintings, for example, a painted grey surface, completely monochromatic - they come from a motivation, or result from a state, that was very negative. It has a lot to do with hopelessness, depression and such things. But it has to be turned on its head in the end, and has to come to a form where these paintings possess beauty. And in this case, it's not a carefree beauty, but rather a serious one.”

ArtEndsStatesFormMotivationResultsCasesExamplePaintingSeriousNegativeSurfaceGreyHopelessnessCarefreeMonochromatic
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I wanted to say something different: the pictures are also a leave-taking, in several respects. Factually: these specific persons are dead; as a general statement, death is leave-taking. And then ideologically: a leave-taking from a specific doctrine of salvation and, beyond that, from the illusion that unacceptable circumstances of life can be changed by this conventional expedient of violent struggle.”

PersonsArtDifferentWantedStruggleChangedPaintingCircumstancesIllusionSalvationViolentStatementsDoctrineConventional
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“And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s (paintings from black-and-white photographs), with a compressed summation that precludes any possible continuation. And so it is a leave-taking from thoughts and feelings of my own on a very basic level. Not that this is a deliberate act, of course; it is a quasi-automatic sequence of disintegration and reformation which I can perceive, as always, only in retrospect.”

ArtI CanEndsFeelingsCoursesStrongBlackMy OwnWhiteLevelsPaintingBearsPhotographPerceiveBlack And WhiteDeliberateSequence1960sReformationRetrospectThoughts And FeelingsContinuationDisintegration
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“There was no special event that made me decide. I had collected some photos and the idea was in the back of my mind for a long time. It was growing and growing, so finally I said, 'I must paint this.' I come from East Germany and am not a Marxist, so of course at the time I had no sympathy for the ideas, or for the ideology that these people represented. I couldn't understand, but I was still impressed. Like everyone, I was touched. It was an exceptional moment for Germany.”

PeopleMindLongArtMadeSaidStillsIdeasMomentsCoursesGrowingSpecialEventsPaintingLong TimePaintEastIdeologyGermanyTouchedImpressedExceptionalOf My MindMarxistNo SympathyEast GermanySpecial Events
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.”

IfsKnowsWayArtImportantHardPlayChoicesCoursesChanceDoorsPaintingOriginalsI RealizedOpeningAbstractArbitraryAbstract Painting
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“The grey is certainly inspired by the photo-paintings, and, of course, it's related to the fact that I think grey is an important colour - the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair. In other words, for states of being and situations that affect one, and for which one would like to find a visual expression.”

ThinkingArtImportantStatesFactsCoursesSituationPaintingExpressionQuietDespairSittingIdealsInspiredIndifferenceRelatedVisualsColourGreyFenceKeeping Quiet
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“I first came up with the idea for the colour-chart pictures back in 1966, and my preoccupation with the topic culminated in 1974 with a painting that consisted of 4,096 colour fields. Initially I was attracted by the typical Pop Art aestheticism of using standard colour-sample cards; I preferred the unartistic, tasteful and secular illustration of the different tones to the paintings of Albers, Bill, Calderara, Lohse, etc.”

FirstsArtIdeasDifferentFieldsPaintingStandardsBillsPopsCardsToneColourEtcSecularTypicalTopicsIllustrationPreoccupationSamplePop Art
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“Turning to the colour-classification methodology: The starting point are the four pure colours red, yellow, green and blue; their in-between shades and scales of brightness result in colour schemes containing 16, 64, 256 and 1,024 shades. More colours would be pointless because it wouldn't be possible to distinguish between them clearly.”

ArtWould BeResultsFourPaintingPureRedBlueGreenStartingScalesColourShadeYellowSchemesPointlessBrightnessStarting PointContainingMethodologyClassificationColour Red
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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