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Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter Quotes

Visual Artist

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Famous Gerhard Richter Quotes

“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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“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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“A work of art is itself an object, first of all, and so manipulation is unavoidable: it's a prerequisite. But I needed the greater objectivity of the photograph in order to correct my own way of seeing: for instance, if I draw an object from nature, I start to stylize and to change it in accordance with my personal vision and my training. But if I paint from a photograph, I can forget all the criteria that I get from these sources. I can paint against my will, as it were. And that, to me, felt like an enrichment.”

IfsWayFirstsArtI CanOrderFeltMy OwnForgetVisionGreaterSeeingObjectsSourceNeededPhotographyTrainingDrawsArt IsPaintPhotographInstanceManipulationWorks Of ArtCriteriaObjectivityPrerequisitesEnrichmentPersonal Vision
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 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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“The first colour charts were unsystematic. They were based directly on commercial colour samples. They were still related to Pop Art. In the canvases that followed, the colours were chosen arbitrarily and drawn by chance. Then, 180 tones were mixed according to a given system and drawn by chance to make four variations of 180 tones. But after that the number 180 seemed too arbitrary to me, so I developed a system based on a number of rigorously defined tones and proportions.”

FirstsArtStillsGivenChanceNumbersFourPaintingPopsChosenDefinedRelatedToneColourProportionArbitraryVariationSamplePop Art
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“Based on mixtures of the three primary colours, along with black and white, I come up with a certain number of possible colours and, by multiplying these by two or four, I obtain a definite number of colour fields that I multiply yet again by two, etc. But the complete realization of this project demands a great deal of time and work.”

ArtTwoCertainThreeBlackWhiteDealsNumbersFourFieldsPaintingDemandProjectsCome UpRealizationPrimariesColourEtcBlack And WhiteDefiniteMixturesMultiplying
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context - which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.”

MeanArtIdeasFormUsedCertainCoursesIndividualInformationPaintingBearsReflectionFunctionVisualsCollectivesInterpretationTranslationsIllustrationResemblancePictorial
Author:Gerhard Richter
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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
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“When I first painted a number of canvases grey all over (about eight years ago), I did so because I did not know what to paint, or what there might be to paint: so wretched a start could lead to nothing meaningful. As time went on, however, I observed differences of quality among the grey surfaces - and also that these betrayed nothing of the destructive motivation that lay behind them. The pictures began to teach me. By generalizing a personal dilemma, they resolved it.”

KnowsYearsFirstsArtMightMotivationDifferencesNumbersBehindsQualityTeachPaintingYears AgoLaysPaintEightSurfaceMeaningfulDestructiveGreyBetrayedWretchedDilemma
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“Grey. It makes no statement whatever; it evokes neither feelings nor associations: it is really neither visible nor invisible. Its inconspicuousness gives it the capacity to mediate, to make visible, in a positively illusionistic way, like a photograph. It has the capacity that no other colour has, to make 'nothing' visible.”

WayGivingArtFeelingsPaintingCapacityPhotographInvisibleStatementsColourVisibleAssociationGreyPositivelyEvoke
Book:Gerhard Richter: October 18, 1977
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“To me, grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, noncommitment, absence of opinion, absence of shape. But grey, like formlessness and the rest, can be real only as an idea, and so all I can do is create a colour nuance that means grey but is not it. The painting is then a mixture of grey as a fiction and grey as a visible, designated area of colour.”

MeanArtI CanIdeasRealCan DoFictionOpinionPaintingShapesAreasAbsenceWelcomeIndifferenceColourVisibleBeing RealGreyMixturesNuance
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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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
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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“My pictures are devoid of objects; like objects, they are themselves objects. This means that they are devoid of content, significance or meaning, like objects or trees, animals, people or days, all of which are there without a reason, without a function and without a purpose. This is the quality that counts. Even so, there are good and bad pictures.”

PeopleMeanArtReasonPurposeAnimalQualityTreeObjectsPaintingFunctionSignificanceGood And Bad
Author:Gerhard Richter
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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 believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. In nature everything is always right: the structure is right, the proportions are good, the colours fit the forms. If you imitate that in painting, it becomes false.”

IfsBelieveArtRealityWantedFormI BelievePaintingFitStructureColourProportionImitationCorresponding
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“These pictures possibly give rise to questions of political content or historical truth. Neither interests me in this instance. And although even my motivation for painting them is probably of no significance, I am trying to put a name to it here, as an articulation, parallel to the pictures, as it were, of my disquiet and of my opinion.”

GivingTryingArtPoliticalMotivationNamesInterestOpinionPaintingHistoricalInstanceSignificanceParallelsArticulationHistorical Truth
Author:Gerhard Richter
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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
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
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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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“What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without any addition, to operate immediately and directly. Even at the risk of being boring. Mere demonstration. The mirrors, and even more the Panes of Glass, were also certainly directed against Duchamp, against his Large Glass.”

ArtIdeasPiecesRiskPaintingMirrorsMereGlassesBoringHungDemonstration
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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“I started doing 'figures', then, one day, all of a sudden, I started doing abstraction. And then I started doing both. But it was never really a conscious decision. It was simply a question of desire. In fact, I really prefer making figurative work, but the figure is difficult. So to work around the difficulty I take a break and paint abstractly. Which I really like, by the way, because it allows me to make beautiful paintings.”

WayArtFactsBeautifulDesireDifficultDecisionBreakFiguresPaintingOne DayConsciousDifficultyPaintAbstractionBeautiful Paintings
Author:Gerhard Richter
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“My method is related to an attempt to do something that might be understood by today's world, or that could at least provide understanding. In other words, doing something I understand and that everyone understands. This natural desire for communication is also found in other domains, like reading and discourse, etc. I also hate repeating myself; it gives me no pleasure whatsoever. Once I've understood something, I need to start off on new ground.”

WorldNeedsGivingArtMightTodayDesireHateReadingFoundUnderstandingNaturalPleasurePaintingCommunicationUnderstoodGive MeMethodRelatedEtcDiscourseDomainToday's World
Author:Gerhard Richter
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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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“Only about one per cent of my paintings show family members. Do they help me deal with problems? It's likely that these problems can only be depicted. But photographs, private ones and others, keep appearing that fascinate me so much that I want to paint them. And sometimes the real meaning these images have for me only becomes apparent later.”

WantArtRealSometimesHelpingShowsProblemDealsPaintingMembersPaintPhotographHelp MeCentsAppearingFamily Members
Author:Gerhard Richter
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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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“Architecture was, or is, a kind of hobby, an inclination I have to fiddling around and building things. Putting up shelves or cupboards, or making tools, or designing houses ... it always has a functional or social motivation. If social changes are in the air, I am gripped immediately by the desire to build, and I think that I accelerate or anticipate changes in my life by doing so, at least in draft. In the case of my house, that was anticipation: in other words, first build, then change one's life.”

IfsThinkingFirstsKindArtDesireMotivationHouseSocialCasesAirDesignBuildingPaintingToolsArchitectureAnticipationHobbiesShelvesSocial ChangeInclinationAnticipateAccelerateChanging My LifeCupboardsBuilding Things
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
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