You Can Hire an Artist

Half-Naked Thursday: Gerhard Richter

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Nov 12, 2009

For the last few weeks I had been anticipating last Saturday’s opening at Marian Goodman Gallery here in New York:  Gerhard Richter: Abstract Paintings 2009 which runs from November 7, 2009 to January 9, 2010.  I’ve been looking forward to it because Gerhard Richter is one of my favorite living artists.   I had planned to attend the opening, take pictures to include in a post, and possibly meet Mr. Richter himself.  But other circumstances prevented these plans from becoming action and I had to put off seeing the show.  Oh well, the abstract paintings are just one aspect of Gerhard Richter’s oeuvre.  And in that fact lies the key to one of the reasons why I think Gerhard Richter is such a great artist.

I’ve not seen a show of Richter’s work since MoMA mounted the wonderful exhibit  Gerhard Richter: 40 years of Painting back in 2002.  Then we were treated to the entire variety of his work.  If you have not followed Gerhard Richter’s long career (b. 1932) you may not be aware of his tendency to avoid being pigeon-holed by a style, subject matter, or medium.  If you only went to see his latest abstracts, then you do not know the landscapes, the seascapes, animals, architecture, the nudes, the portraits, the over-painted photographs, mirrors, and sculptures.  Richter avoids giving subject matter a value and meaning by finding no commitment to any one genre.  He pushes this further by obstructing or skewing our examination of any particular subject with paint which is blurred, scraped, layered, or smoothed to acquire a paint surface that we cannot escape.

Here then are some of Richter’s paintings of nudes whose dates range over thirty years.  These are shown in chronological order.  Roter Akt (Red Nude) was completed in 1965 and the latest nude I was able to find, Torso, is from 1997.  There is no consistency in Richter’s depicting of the nudes, not in range of palette, texture, canvas size or shape, or detail.  Maybe we can begin to guess that each work is Richter’s because of the characteristic blurring of the edges of the subjects.  But it is very difficult to be certain that the paintings are all done  by the same artist. 

The eschewing of style is rare among artists whose ambition is international acclaim.  Look at Lucio Pozzi.  (Who?, you say.  Another time, but soon.) In Richter’s case (and Pozzi’s) style intentionally gets lost through his method of working. During the course of his career Richter has collected sketches, images and photographs.  Some photos he has taken, some found, others out of books and magazines.  He has put them into a collection he calls the Atlas.  From this he takes his subject matter and lets the selection dictate the content, color, and composition of his paintings.  With this method he need not make many subjective decisions, and leaves a great deal to chance. In his way, with a lack of meaning in his subject matter and an emphasis on painting itself, Richter is continuing the Modernist mantra of painting as object, a mantra that a few decades ago seemed to be pointing to The Death of Painting, a theory that has been often written about  but never totally caught on.  By giving us our recognizable subject (but at the same time leaving it undefined and elusive) Richter returns painting to its classic traditions as well (minus the meaning).  And Richter gives no answers to anything. 

Maybe its not right then to even show some of his nudes as a group.  If we want to see the randomness that Richter prefers — the lack of cohesiveness, hierarchy, and  style — perhaps viewing his work chronologically is the only way to appreciate that.  But I have a feeling even that is over-thinking the premise.  Randomness can also include happy coincidence.  And I’ve got Half-Naked Thursday as a theme.  And, after all, Richter has his abstraction paintings exclusively in a show at present.  So I’ll get going into midtown Manhattan and give you the report.  But I promise you more of Gerhard Richter’s work, and not just the new abstractions. 

Kathleen Benton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Click on images to enlarge, read title translations, and details.  Click again to return to page.)

All paintings by Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)

Roter Akt (Red Nude), 1965, Oil on canvas,60 cm X 50 cm

Ema (Akt auf einer Treppe) (Ema (Nude on a Staircase)), 1966, Oil on canvas, 200 cm X 130 cm, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Akt (Nude), 1967, Oil on canvas, 105 cm X 95 cm

Olympia, 1967, Oil on canvas, 200 cm X 130 cm, Böckmann Collection, Neues Museum, Staatliches Museum für Kunst und Design, Nuremberg, Germany

 I.G., 1993, Oil on canvas, 72 cm X 102 cm

Kl. Badende (Small Bather), 1994, Oil on canvas, 51 cm X 36 cm

 Torso, 1997,  Oil on aluminium, 55 cm X 48 cm

To see complete details of these works and more visit gerhard-richter.com