Tuesday, February 20, 2007

g e r h a r d r i c h t e r


Gilbert & George 1975
oil on canvas
80.4 (h) x 100.4 (w) cm

german artist gerhard richter has done it all !

"gerhard richter's work is full of tension between depicted reality and the actuality of painting: process and material. he is known for his photo-paintings, particularly his landscapes, and his involved abstract paintings. despite the scope of his body of work, which is commonly misunderstood as polar, Richter's paintings consistently support a unified theme that is twofold:
1. Images (and ideas and ideals) are static, superficial, and unachievable and are to be doubted; and,
2. Reality is a process of imagination and material creation and revision. Richter’s subject is the range of relationships between illusion and this reality, his painting. the art that Richter painted is not 'art' as such. It is the result of art from the artist's mind. The multiple images that goes through the artist's mind are infinite, but he had to arrive to a conclusion in which sometimes is very difficult to do."


http://www.gerhard-richter.com/home/index.php

“One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy.” (From Richter, 'Notes 1973', in The Daily Practice of Painting, p.78.)

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