Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This exhibition about Gerhard Richter is not about showing the whole range of his œuvre,
which is immense, but instead explores one aspect more closely:
an aspect that forms the basis of his later work, namely the paintings after photographs of the 1960s.
We called this exhibition "Images of an Era", in an attempt to demonstrate that Gerhard Richter
selected subjects from his time – quite up-to-date motifs –
by modifying them in a painterly way, taking them out of their time, and making them timeless.
The exhibition consists of five chapters.
The first one is about Gerhard Richter choosing quite banal subjects,
such as a roll of toilet paper or a kitchen chair or a chandelier.
The second group is about the illusions and desires of that time.
It means Richter engaged in the longing for travel, the longing for wonderful cars:
the phenomenon of the West German economic miracle.
The third group is called "Dead and Ensnared", which is of persons depicted in magazines
in connection with spectacular *** stories, confidence tricks and poisonings et cetera.
Then there is also a small group of friends and benefactors he painted around that time.
And finally there is a very important group of "Political Events".
Gerhard Richter dealt with current political events more than once,
the assassination of John F. Kennedy for example.
But he does not depict the assassination in the car itself,
but a mourning woman with an umbrella, who can be recognised as Jackie Kennedy,
but at the same time stands for a kind of mourning that seizes the whole body, the whole person.
Since I wanted to prove that these paintings refer to their date of origin directly,
it has been important to ask what sources Richter had used.
It was largely source material from magazines
and I asked myself why he might have been interested in these magazines at that time,
in these very appealing magazines by the way. Magazines back then were much more appealing than nowadays,
at that time there existed only one television channel in Germany,
magazines were of much greater importance as a communication medium.
What was it that sparked Gerhard Richter's interest?
If you want to explore this, you will have to examine the magazines and then you will realise
Richter did not use the most striking, the most sensational, the most spectacular photographs,
but often rather casual ones, puzzling and mysterious photos
from which he could create new meanings in his paintings by enlarging them.
It became apparent that there is a group of paintings depicting individuals,
who according to the original stories of the magazines had been involved and caught up in criminal cases.
A con-artist, a secretary, at least the painting is entitled "Secretary",
her lover, an American lawyer killed his wife because of her.
This is the context Gerhard Richter was interested in at that time. He has certainly read this story.
But he has chosen a photograph that does not seem to refer to a criminal case at all.
The secretary herself does not have anything to do with it,
also you cannot see that someone had been killed.
And this is the interesting and gripping part of Gerhard Richter's approach,
that he takes often random photographs that are mysterious and therefore open for new interpretations.
And he is monumentalising and enlarging them in the painting
and he makes them appear mysterious again with his special way of painting – the blurring.
He lifts the figure out of the bare, time-related naturalism
and makes them universally valid and of stronger resonance today.
This painting shows a family and the caption suggests that a miracle has saved them.
If you know the image source for this painting, which can be found in Richter's "Atlas"
– in this huge collection of source material and sketches et cetera –
then you will see that the family fled from Hungary – the Iron Curtain was still very much intact –
and made it to the west as if by a miracle.
It is suggestive of Gerhard Richter's own biography.
Just before the eventual closure of the Iron Curtain, Richter himself
crossed the frontier between GDR and West Germany from the east to the west.
From this point of view it might seem that he had been saved by a miracle on his transit to the west,
and that biographical elements found their way into the painting.
This relatively large work titled "Volker Bradke" was painted by Gerhard Richter
for a one-day exhibition at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, as part of a whole week of events
that took place, when Schmela was forced to leave his gallery in the Hunsrückenstraße in Düsseldorf.
Sigmar Polke carried out a project on one day, as well as Joseph Beuys…
Gerhard Richter addressed this boy Volker Bradtke, he made a film about him and showed it in the exhibition,
a banner, a series of photographs and then this huge painting. Volker Bradtke was kind of a groupie.
He followed the artists in Düsseldorf, without having a function himself,
without being an artist himself, he was a follower, present everywhere.
Gerhard Richter took him as a subject – I believe, as a kind of alter ego –
a person who was his subject of a whole series of works in different mediums
and therefore the main subject of the exhibition. The source photograph for this painting was taken at a fair.
"Toilet Paper", so I got the impression, is an immediate response of Gerhard Richter's to Marcel Duchamp.
Gerhard Richter always wanted to be a painter and he always wanted to stay a painter.
And he has tackled a similar hygienic subject, though not as an object,
but he has painted it and proved how wonderful a painting of toilet paper can be,
if you know how to develop the painterly techniques.
Thus "Toilet Paper" is an immediate reaction to Marcel Duchamp but referring back to painting.
My vision from the outset was, that these works from the 1960s need to be completed
with the Baader-Meinhof cycle of 1988,
because Gerhard Richter then takes up the earlier painterly techniques – grey on grey, the blurring – he perfects them,
and because he takes up again the subject of death, which also played a major role in his work of the 1960s
and in particular because he deals with the elements of topicality and remembrance.
The cycle is entitled "October 18, 1977", which was the day the dead were found in Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart.
But it is not only about this one day but about events from the 1970s
that had been picked out as if by a flashlight and linked with each other.
The motif of the three paintings derives from an identity parade of Gudrun Ensslin
after she had been arrested in Hamburg.
I think the reason Richter was interested in painting this motif three times
was to explore the different kinds of presence.
Because she is depicted three times, it is as if she had been caught unintentionally, against her will.
I believe that constitutes the immediacy, the shock, especially of the painting in the middle.
It is a confrontation with us, in an immediate and frightening way.
First the turning away, then the turning towards us that is the differing relationship to,
and the different ways to address the beholder,
this is what Richter must have been interested in, thus the three paintings and not just one painting.
He has linked different events with each other, in order to keep the memory alive
of these important, traumatising, West German political events,
which had either not been addressed in art at all or only in a simple critical manner.
And this is not Gerhard Richter's approach, he wants neither to advocate nor criticise,
he leaves the judgement to us.
These three paintings are about the death of Ulrike Meinhof, who killed herself.
I think Gerhard Richter created three differently sized paintings,
because it is about varying closeness and distance.
In one case the marks of strangulation around the neck are distinct, then she recedes into the distance;
so a greater distance to the event is created. We, the beholders, assume a greater distance to the event.
It is important for Gerhard Richter that he does not tell a specific story,
but he creates a space that we can enter into and thus he needs several slightly different paintings.
This cabinet features material that Gerhard Richter has collected himself, photographs mostly,
which he collected at a Hamburg press archive and that he kept in a binder;
he gave this binder to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which owns the cycle.
Traces of use can still be found on this source material.
Gerhard Richter was not permitted to take the photographs from the archive
he could only make photocopies, hence he created his paintings from photocopies.
And this material is here on display, but it also includes several photographs that he collected but never used for his paintings.
And the question is: why did he not use them?
And it is apparent that he did not use those photographs that tell a story very clearly and neatly.
This is not what he was interested in, but it had to have this air of mystery that allowed further interpretation.
He knows how to start the art of painting from scratch, again and again over the decades – more than five decades now –
this is what absolutely fascinates me and what I admire about his work, also because it is absolutely unique.