EXHIBITIONS and sending up these filmic orgies of destruc - had several highlights, but it was hard not to photographs at the Museum Morsbroich, tion. The other installations by artists includ - wish a few more risks had been taken and that Leverkusen (closed 18th January); and, ing David Blandy, the collaborative Royal Art there was less of a desperate desire to please – following the controversial dedication last Lodge and Khalil Rabah were rather more in short, an event that was less made up, and August of his stained-glass window for the forced and forgettable. allowed the flaws to show. south transept of Cologne Cathedral (which Some of the most spectacular and memo - was accompanied at the time by a display of rable works were those intended as public 1 L. Biggs: ‘MADE UP,’ in the accompanying guide working material at the Ludwig Museum), a sculpture. These included Ai Weiwei’s Web of for The Liverpool Biennial 2008: International Festival of smaller exhibition of a spin-off series, titled light , which placed a monumental spider in a Contemporary Art , 192 pp. incl. 84 col. + 9 b. & w. ills. 4900 Colours: Version II , shown at the web suspended high above a public square, (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2008), £5. Serpentine Gallery, London, last autumn. A while Richard Wilson’s Turning the place over ISBN 978–1–846–31185–7. See p.12. retrospective of portraits by Richter opens 2 Ibid. , pp.14–21. (Fig.44), cut an ovoid, eight metres in cir - 3 Ibid ., p.12. this month at the National Portrait Gallery, 2 cumference, into the façade of Cross Keys 4 See, for example, O.M. Viso, ed.: exh. cat. Regarding London. Gerhard Richter. Paintings from Private House (formerly a branch of Yates’s Wine Beauty , Washington (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Collections , currently exhibited at the Alber- Lodge), which oscillated in three dimensions. Garden, Smithsonian Institution) 1999; and D. Hickey: tina, Vienna (to 3rd May), and seen by this The title of course alluded to both the slang Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism , New reviewer when installed in the Royal Scottish term for burglary and a suggestion of potential Mexico 2001. Academy building of the National Gallery, regeneration for this abandoned building Edinburgh (closed 4th January), is the first awaiting redevelopment, but the intervention exhibition to draw entirely on private collec - directly recalled the radical architectural tions and contains a number of rarely seen experiments of Gordon Matta-Clark, forming works. 3 Concurrently, the Scottish National one of the most nuanced efforts to address the Gerhard Richter Gallery of Modern Art was showing a display urban context of the Biennial. of Richter’s recent photographic version of The work presented at Tate Liverpool Edinburgh the painting series 48 Portraits , made for the tended to play it safe and presented largely Venice Biennale in 1972. It is a testament to familiar and occasionally ubiquitous artists the variety of Richter’s industry since the from the international exhibition and biennial by JOHN-PAUL STONARD early 1960s that these combined events do not circuit (David Altmejd, Charles Avery and lead to a sense of overkill. Recent scholarship Guy Ben-Ner, etc.), but some of their works IN 1964 , THREE YEARS after moving from on the artist, augmenting older questions of stood out. Omer Fast’s specially commis - Dresden in East Germany to the Rhineland in theoretical interpretation with research into sioned two-channel video Take a deep breath , the West, Gerhard Richter was enjoying the the history and material basis of his work, has skilfully interwove conflicting narratives, both first successes of his career with exhibitions in also been crucial in providing a fresh view of documentary and fictitious, around an act of Munich and Düsseldorf. ‘It’s been hard from his remarkable œuvre .4 terrorism – an eye-witness account recalling my point of view, having two exhibitions at Gerhard Richter. Paintings from Private Collec - the discovery of the body of a suicide bomber the same time. I don’t want to do that again tions draws chiefly on the collection of the in Jerusalem was juxtaposed with a Holly - . . .’, he wrote later that year – a regret Sammlung Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, wood crew’s attempts to reconstruct and that appears not a little ironic when and was instigated by its Director, Götz dramatise this event for a film. The work considered from today’s perspective. 1 Current Adriani. To this core collection have been lurched from shocking to funny, from appar - and recent exhibitions of his work include added works from four further private collec - ently informative to completely obfuscating, a major show of large abstract paintings tions, two of which are named as the Ströher and was perhaps the most successful distilla - (including the Cage series, first shown in 2007 Collection from Darmstadt, and works tion of the Biennial’s intentions to play with at Venice and recently on display as a long- belonging to Ingrid and Georg Böckmann, the liminal boundaries of imagination and term loan at Tate Modern) at the Ludwig Berlin. For the Edinburgh showing, works reality. Museum in Cologne (closed 1st February); from the Artist Rooms collection, acquired Another outstanding installation at the a substantial exhibition of over-painted from Anthony d’Offay last year, were also Pilkington Space was Yayoi Kusama’s hallu - cinogenic and obsessively repetitive Gleaming lights of the souls (Fig.45). This was one of 46. Party , by the artist’s signature mise-en-abyme mirrored Gerhard Richter. chambers, with a miniature constellation of 1963. Oil, nails, LED lights seemingly reflected into shimmer - cord, newspaper and canvas, 150 by ing infinity. Kusama, a veteran of exhibitions 182 cm. (Museum such as the 1966 landmark show Eccentric Frieder Burda, Abstraction in New York, presented one of the Baden-Baden; most vital commissions and, indeed, works in exh. National the entire Biennial. Elsewhere, some of the Gallery of Scotland, most surprising work (in both the best and Edinburgh). worst senses of the word) to be found was in affiliated events such as the John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery and Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the A Foundation , which together showed work by an array of emerging artists, and compensated in novelty and experimentation what they lacked in consistent quality – perhaps a lesson that the official Biennial might have heeded. Viewed en masse, this accumulation of artists, installa - tions and exhibitions for and around the Liverpool Biennial was certainly engaging and

118 february 2009 • clI • the burlington magazine EXHIBITIONS added. Questions of taste and patronage that could have been raised on this basis are, however, absent both from the exhibition and its catalogue, which are organised rather on the basis of a survey that runs from one of Richter’s first paintings, the shock-horror Party (1963; Fig.46), to very recent abstract works. The Neo-classical interior architecture of the Academy building presented an unus- ual setting where, at certain moments, the paintings did not feel quite at home – notably in the large central room containing abstract works from the 1980s, a sheet-glass sculpture and a coloured mirror. Yet as a whole the display (curated by Keith Hartley) brought out admirably the spectacular quality of Richter’s work. New scholarship has in particular illumi- nated the artist’s origins in the DDR, and also shed light on his Pop-oriented work made after his move to the West. Painted by Richter while a student in the class of the abstract painter Karl Otto Götz, Party , recent - ly redated to 1963, 5 can only be understood 47. Gelbgrün (Yellow-green) , by Gerhard Richter. 1982. Canvas, two parts, each 260 by 200 cm. (Museum Frieder against the background of the artist’s training Burda, Baden-Baden; exh. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). in Socialist Realism in Dresden in the mid- 1950s, much new information about which has been uncovered by Jeanne Anne Nugent, 6 style can only be effected, Richter’s work compared with the anxiety and boredom that and his discovery of ‘Western’ painting during appears to say, by painting in all styles. Yet Heidegger used as the basis for his description a trip to the second Documenta, in 1959. the suggestion that Richter has ‘explored of being in the world. It is true that Richter’s Although the work of artists such as Fontana every genre of painting imaginable’ is hardly paintings never touch us, but rather exist in and Pollock was the decisive factor in supportable. 8 It is rather that by focusing in their own, thoroughly self-absorbed sphere. Richter’s move to the West, he retained a parallel works on the extremes of naturalism Interpretations of Richter’s work to date critical view on Western affluence, and an and abstraction, as well as extremes of tonal- fall somewhere between Robert Storr’s allegiance to a figurative style, as Party unmis - ity, scale and rhetorical ambition, that Richter recuperation of a northern classicism (in, for takeably shows. Other paintings from this is able to imply the range of unrealised options example, his catalogue for the 2002 retrospec - time, displayed in the first room of the Edin - in-between. Thus it might be said that the tive of Richter’s work at the Museum of burgh exhibition, show the influence of an territory opened up by Richter’s approach to Modern Art, New York) and Benjamin early short period of training as a typographer, painting is not confined to individual works, Buchloh’s intricate theoretical framework such as Alfa Romeo (with text) (1965), and the but exists between them. Successful displays evolved from the psycho-political context of grim image of a human body apparently bring out the way in which stylistic eclec- post-War Germany. Both positions have been crushed beneath a glacier in Tote (1963). ticism creates gaps filled with some ineffable extended by more recent scholarship that Recent research has turned up many of the and fascinating sense of difference – between, emphasises the material and historical condi - sources that Richter used for these images, for instance, vigorously worked colourful tions in which Richter’s work was made, and illuminating what John Jay Curley has termed abstract painting and monochrome painting, in particular elements of the artist’s own biog - the ‘Cold War visuality’ of the period. 7 It was or between a photographic naturalism and a raphy. Some perversity in new approaches is against the context of political and military gestural abstraction. More compelling still is certainly necessary – accounts of individual confrontation that Richter developed his the paradox of attraction and repulsion that works 10 run contrary to the idea that they anti-subjective pose of blankness and neutral - governs viewing of large abstract canvases should be subsumed in some grand theoretical ity, which was to find its barest expression in such as Gelbgrün (Yellow-green ; 1982; Fig.47), whole; and it is certain that future scholarship the Grey paintings, the first of which appeared particularly when displayed, as it was in Edin - will have to contend with the task of prising in 1968. The three in the exhibition, dating burgh, alongside immaculately rendered pho - free the hold of Richter’s own words, pub - from 1973–74, in fact show how this tographic works – here three paintings of lished in numerous volumes of interviews and blankness, derived, as is well known, from candles and skulls. The way Richter paints writings, on interpretations of his work. 11 photography, left Richter free to concentrate candles is miraculous, going far beyond the One further area raised by the recent on surface and light. Olympia (1967), a full- precision of the photographic source. stained-glass window commission is the length semi-nude in the monochrome typical Elsewhere the display of like with like possibility of Richter’s work functioning in a of Richter’s work during the 1960s, reveals his rendered the works less visible, particularly in religious setting, particularly that provided by beguilement with the effects of natural light the case of three recent ‘silicate’ paintings, the tradition of Catholic enthusiasm for achieved, as if naturally, by mixing pigments repulsive and worrying repeating patterns of a ‘avant-garde’ art, especially in Cologne. on the canvas itself. silicon molecule rendered in blurred grey Religion is indeed fast gaining ground as an Moving from the inaugural displays of monochrome. Yet the feeling of anxiety they alternative to politics as a context for modern monochrome, photo-based painting to the may provoke is nevertheless recurrent in and contemporary art outside the market. vast, polychromatic abstract paintings at the Richter’s œuvre , and one of the qualities that Divorced from Richter’s own secular stand - centre of the exhibition conveys the jolt of binds its disparate parts. Dieter Schwarz makes point, his use of aleatory digital procedures to stylistic incongruity for which Richter is best this point in his excellent essay for the exhibi - generate the window’s colour pattern might known. It is thus that his early political tion catalogue, drawing attention to the well be considered by believers as invoking engagement (which evolved in the reformist empty, mute status of his work, describing the ‘divine breath of the Creator Spirit’ climate of the late 1960s) was given painterly how Richter’s surfaces ‘approach the insecure recommended to artists by the Roman form: abandoning ideology as signalled by feeling involved with living’. 9 This can be Church. 12 For Buchloh, unsurprisingly, this

the burlington magazine • clI • february 2009 119 EXHIBITIONS possibility is simply an absurd association with (1988; not in the current exhibition), given as a paper at the Louvre constituted the sum total of the a highly defensive institution undergoing a the Edinburgh conference cited in note 4, is a case in exhibition, until one left the labyrinth of the point. crisis of legitimacy, and in danger of being 11 Gerhard Richter, Text 1961 bis 2007. Schriften, Interviews, Espace Richelieu and entered the majestic interpreted as a ‘personal aberration’ on the Briefe . Edited by D. Elgar and H.U. Obrist. 600 pp. incl. space of the Marly courts. There, as if released 13 part of the artist: those who awarded Richter 114 b. & w. ills. (Walter König, Cologne, 2008). from the unfortunate greenish backgrounds the Art and Culture Prize of the German 12 As advocated by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical that defined and separated the works in the Catholic Church in 2004 presumably thought ‘Letter to Artists’, 1999. exhibition from those on permanent display, otherwise. It is the strength of Richter’s 13 B.H.D. Buchloh: ‘Gerhard Richter, Cologne Cathe - it was extraordinarily easy to stray from that ‘democratic’ aesthetic that it can make itself dral’, Artforum (December 2007), pp.306–09. path while wending through the crypt Girar - available to such different constituents, and for don, and then up to the Puget courts, where this reason act as a mirror of society at large. it was possible to compare a few marble sculp - tures after which some of the exhibited 1 Gerhard Richter to Heiner Friedrich, 23rd November bronzes were actually made. However, the 1964, reprinted in H.U. Obrist, ed.: Gerhard Richter, The French bronzes, Renaissance setting of Houdon’s bronze La Frileuse (cat. Daily Practice of Painting , London 1995. no.34) in a small room off the upper Puget 2 to Revolution Catalogues: Gerhard Richter. Large Abstracts . Edited by court provided a less than grand finale to such U. Wilmes, with essays by B.H.D. Buchloh, S. Gohr, Paris, New York and Los Angeles a magnificent show. G. Stemmrich and U. Wilmes. 160 pp. incl. 136 col. + Bresc-Bautier’s erudite catalogue essay 137 b. & w. ills. (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2008), 49.80. € 2 ISBN 978–3–7757–2249–0; Large Abstracts travels to the by PATRICIA WENGRAF ‘L’Art du Bronze en France 1500–1660’ Haus der Kunst, Munich (27th February to 17th brings further insight and life to her previously May); Gerhard Richter. Overpainted Photographs. Edited published archival researches into the records by M. Heinzelmann, with essays by S. Hustvedt, M. WHEN IN 2000 Jonathan Marsden of the of the three royal foundries, and of the 325 Heinzelmann, U.M. Schneede and B. Strauss. 392 pp. Royal Collection, London, and Robert Wen - other founders active in Paris during this incl. 496 col. + 1 b. & w. ills. (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, ley, then of the Wallace Collection, London, period, many of whom probably operated 2008), 39.80. ISBN 978–3 –7757–2243–8; this exhibi - € instigated the French Bronze Study Group, from very small workshops. The relatively tion travelled to the Centre de la photographie , Geneva initially to understand better the collections in small selection of large bronze figures after the (to 29th March). Gerhard Richter. Zufall, das their care, neither could have envisaged that Antique (which will not be shown at subse - Kölner Domfenster und 4900 Farben / The Cologne Cathe - dral Window, and 4900 Colours . Essays by S. Diedrich, B. their endeavours would result in the grandiose quent venues) demonstrated the French royal Schock-Werner, H. Butin and B. Pelzer. 144 pp. incl. splendour of the exhibition recently shown in taste, initiated by Francis I, for copies of 68 col. + 2 b. & w. ills. (Verlag Kölner Dom and Ver - Paris. Curated by Geneviève Bresc-Bautier Antique statues then in Rome. They were also lag Buchhandlung Walter König, Cologne, 2007), 34. and Guilhem Scherf, Bronzes français de la among the best documented works on show. € ISBN 978–3–86560–298–5. Gerhard Richter. 4900 Renaissance au Siècle des lumières , seen by this At that time portraits normally took the Colours . Texts by B.H.D. Buchloh, P. Gidal and reviewer at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and form of medals and, apart from funerary B. Pelzer. 144 pp. incl. 70 col. ills. (Hatje Cantz, opening later this month at the Metropolitan monuments, very few portrait busts were Ostfildern, 2008), 39.80. ISBN 978–3–7757–2344–2. € Museum of Art, New York (from 24th made in bronze. The head of Henry IV attrib - Gerhard Richter Portraits runs at the National Portrait 1 Gallery, London February to 24th May), was in every sense a uted to Matthieu Jacquet is supreme (no.33; (26th February to 31st May). Cata - feast for the eyes, although the works would Fig.48) but appears to emanate from a logue: Gerhard Richter Portraits . By Paul Moorhouse. 176 pp. incl. 100 col. ills. (National Portrait Gallery, have benefited from better lighting. It was all different aesthetic to that governing the bust London, 2009), £40. ISBN 978 –1–85514 –397 –5. too easy to assume that the first three rooms at of Jean d’Alesso (no.12) and of Philippe 3 Catalogue: Gerhard Richter. Paintings from Private Col - Desportes in relief (no.35), the latter two lections. Edited by G. Adriani, with essays by G. Adriani evidently being by the same hand. and D. Schwarz. 184 pp. incl. 105 col. + 14 b. & w. Among early makers of bronzes on a ills. (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2008), 24. ISBN € smaller scale there are few revelations: Ponce 978–3–7757–2136–3. After its Vienna showing, the Jacquio (and circle), the earliest of these, is exhibition will be seen at MKM Museum Küp - persmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg represented by just four works (of which nos.7 (16th and 8 were not shown in Paris), although the May to 16th August). 4 The creation of the Gerhard Richter Archive within Dresden Diana (no.6) bears little resemblance, the Dresden State Art Collections in 2005 has been cru - either in form or facture, to the other more cial for much of this work. Papers given at two recent classicising works attributed to this master. conferences have drawn on the holdings: a symposium Similarly, Barthélemy Prieur, court sculptor devoted to the artist at the J. Paul Getty Center, Los to Henry IV and the greatest maker of French Angeles, 2007; and ‘Gerhard Richter: New Approach - bronze statuettes, could have been better es’, 21st November 2008, National Gallery Complex, served by his advocate, Regina Seelig- Edinburgh. A review of further recent scholarly publi - Teuwen. In stark contrast to Prieur’s sublime cations on the artist is forthcoming in this Magazine. 5 signed statuettes of Henry IV and Marie de’ Party was redated following Dietmar Elger’s rediscov - Medici (nos.18 and 19), the fully clothed ery of the source image in the magazine Neue Illustrierte (30th December 1962); see Adriani, op. cit. (note 3), p.17. figures of the same personages (nos.20 and 21), 6 See U. Bischoff, E. Hipp and J. Nugent: exh. cat. might, as Bresc-Bautier points out (p.62), From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter. German more probably be by Jean Mansart – if, Paintings from Dresden , Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty indeed, they are a pair. And tempting as it Center) 2007. might be to identify the figure of Neptune with 7 See J.J. Curley: ‘The Art that Came in From the three seahorses (no.16) with a terracotta group Cold: Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, 1950–1968’, of this subject in the 1583 inventory of Mme Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2007; see also I. Misterek- Prieur as the model for a fountain of Neptune Plagge: ‘Kunst mit Fotografie’ und die frühen Fotogemälde commissioned for the marquise de Rothelin Gerhard Richters , Hamburg and Münster 1992. 8 Adriani, op. cit . (note 3), p.11. on 22nd May 1583, stylistic comparison with 9 other documented works by Prieur leaves this D. Schwarz: ‘Regarding Gerhard Richter’s Paint - 48. Head of Henry IV , attributed to Matthieu Jacquet, ings’, in ibid ., pp.37–42, here p.41. called Grenoble. c.1605. Bronze, 31.8 cm. high. writer unconvinced. 10 Tamara Trodd’s fascinating contextualisation of (Musée du Louvre, Paris; exh. Metropolitan Museum Michel Anguier’s Neptune (no.56) provides Richter’s photorealist painting of his daughter, Betty of Art, New York). a single highlight in the assembled casts of this

120 february 2009 • clI • the burlington magazine