Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Gerhard Richter

Quote by Gerhard Richter

“As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact.”

Quote by Gerhard Richter

Create image

Author

Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter

German visual artist known for his unique painting style and diverse creative techniques. Richter's works span a wide range of styles from abstraction to figuration, and his career has spanned over half a century, profoundly influencing contemporary art. more

You May Also Like

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image