GERHARD RICHTER – LIGHT ABSTRACTIONIST

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes SVA ID# 1022862

Masters of Light Final Paper

December 2015 Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

The German painter has expressed himself in many different areas of art and produced works in various forms: paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and one film piece. It is a work so vast and varied that it is hard to give an overview of his oeuvre. For such reason, I have decided to focus only on his paintings, from the very start of his career to the most recent works. Wonderfully enough, even when focusing exclusively on the paintings, we still find a great variety of styles, from photorealistic (though sometimes “blurred”) paintings, to abstract ones, to the exploration of color and its functions. He is an artist that deals with the visible and the invisible, using his paintings to reveal what is hidden – literally and figuratively speaking. His work is an enormous contribution to the art world, and it is hard to deny that he is truly a master of light.

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in February 1932. Right before the start of the war, his family moved to Reichenau, a town in the countryside – now a part of Poland. Being in the countryside proved to be favorable once the war started, as it was safer than the big cities. However, it is not possible to escape the hardships of war, and Gerhard’s family was affected in many ways. His father was arrested very soon after the start of the war and was kept in an American prisoner of war camp until 1946. This long period of absence was never recovered, and Gerhard never developed a true relationship with him. Apart from that, many other family members were killed, including his aunt Marianne, as part of the eugenics program. 1951 marked the year that Gerhard moved back to Dresden, in order to study at the Academy, where he began to paint. A decade after that, he escapes to West Germany and settles in Düsseldorf. There he decides to study again and starts to paint like never before, having his first solo exhibition in 1963.

The war years had a great impact on his early work, being a constant theme in his first paintings. Be it in “Bombers” [Fig. 1] from 1963, or “Aunt Marianne” [Fig. 2] from 1965, death is a topic that seemed to be in his work in one way or another, even when not related directly to the war, as in “Dead” [Fig. 3] from 1963. These first images, reproduced from pre-existing photographs coming from newspapers, magazines and family albums marked Richter’s career. Working from such photographs freed him, as he was able to interpret the light already captured by a photographer in his own way, transforming it, and noting the differences and similarities between the mediums. He was interested in the objectivity and subjectivity coming from such paintings, and continued to produce such works in vast numbers at the start of his career.

At the same time, still working with pre-existing pictures, Richter began to implement his methods of blurring the images – something that became a recurring idea in his work – giving them his unique view. “Aunt Marianne” [Fig. 2] was already a great example of such technique, but many others were produced, including “The Liechti Family” [Fig. 4]. The “motion blur” created in such images shows how light can abstract and contort an image like that. This play with movement and focus also suggest that, like memories, eventually the images start to fade away, leaving behind a shadow, sometimes barely recognizable. This is clearly seen in works such as “Nanni and Kitty” [Fig. 5]. The Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862 blurring here is so intense that it becomes to play in the abstract. The “shadow” left behind is reminiscent of the afterimages explored and explained by Goethe. The image fades, vanishes, but we are left with an imprint – at least for a while, before it also dissipates.

His color paintings of the time also contained the blurring of images, but seem to give a different effect. In one of his most famous paintings, “Ema (Nude on a Staircase)” [Fig. 6], we see his first wife seemingly emitting a light of her own, coming from within her. It seems to be his reading of the Epicurean idea that we are the ones who shine a light into the world in order to see, and not the other way around. The same light that comes from Ema could be closely related to the black body radiation theories of . This light, that seems to wash away the image, gives it also a oniric feel, as if what we are seeing is a vision from a dream. In another of his color paintings from the time, “Reclining Nude” [Fig. 7], the blurring is once again so intense that if it was not for the title, one could be unaware of what they were looking at. But here the effect created is of a different sort. We are not in the oniric territory anymore, as this image seems to be the rendition of a VHS tape. While such ways of recording images would only come around a decade later, the similarities between this Richter’s painting and the interlaced images of VHS tapes is quite astounding.

Around the same time, Richter began to produce a series that would continue to weave his other works for a few decades to follow. These were his color charts – his deep exploration of color and its effects. The first few examples of such works, which surfaced in the late sixties, were simple representation of colors displayed in grids. The variation of colors, and the different arrangement of such colors would give a different effect each time. Richter was showing how colors seem to change depending on the order they are presented. “192 Colors” [Fig. 8] from 1966 is a clear example of this. With time however, Richter would increase the number of colors, and most importantly, the proximity between them. While the first ones would give a clear separation of each, works like “4096 Colors” [Fig. 9] from 1974, eliminated the separation, creating a super- cluster of colors – while at the same time changing the whole effect it gives off. Now they seem to represent the pixilation of digital images, as if an image was enlarged to its own limit. It is as if Richter is trying to show that any image could be abstract if you look closely enough.

Curiously, around the same time that these color charts were being produced, Richter created another series of paintings that went the opposite direction – his grey monochromes. These paintings, such as “Grey” [Fig. 10] from 1967, were an important step forward in his career towards abstraction. While his true abstract painting would be of a different kind, the subtraction of elements found in the grey monochromes was necessary for him to achieve what he later would in his career. He himself recognizes how important they were, and references back to them in one of his most important and famous paintings, “Betty” [Fig. 11]. In this portrait, his daughter Betty looks back to what seems to be an empty background, but is actually one of his grey monochromes.

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

With time, his work became more and more abstract, and even some of his figurative paintings would contain abstract elements. In a series he made of city landscapes, we see the abstraction of forms, created by a freer and rougher brushstroke. “Townscape Paris” [Fig. 12], an aerial view of the city, seems to be just a collection of abstract brushstrokes if seem with a certain proximity. From far, the buildings and rooftops of Paris become more recognizable, but the manner it was painting makes it look like a destroyed city. Richter himself recognizes that such representation of the city must come from the destruction he witnessed in Dresden after the war. With time, the images he represented lost all shape and form, and abstraction prevailed. We can see a glimpse of his process in a series of sketches that originated from “Bühle Höhe” [Fig. 13]. The three sketches [Fig. 14 – 16] he made from this painting show how the original landscape slowly loses its form, becoming almost exclusively an abstract representation of what was there to start with.

This “erasing” of the image became his method for the rest of his career. Richter would start with a figurative painting, or a collection of shapes, and little by little scrape off the paint, spreading it and transforming it into something completely different and unique – obliterating what’s underneath. In the same way he used to transform pre-existing images during the start of his career, he was now transforming his own paintings. He became both the origin and the result of the images, making his abstract works the culmination of everything he ever produced. These are Gerhard Richter works to the very core. Painting such as “Abstract Painting” [Fig. 17] from 1999 and “Abstract Painting” [Fig. 18] from 2001, show how his work evolved. And still, we find in them a strong sense of the representation of light. The one from 1999 for instance appears to contain a sort of transparency, with light coming through it. It resembles to a certain extent the light we see coming thought stained glass windows. It is not a coincidence that Richter was commissioned to create his own stained glass window in the Cologne Cathedral [Fig. 19], which mixes his color charts to the transparency found in some of his abstract works.

Be it in the figurative field or the abstract, Gerhard Richter has firmly secured his position as one of the most important artist of the 20th and 21th century, and the exploration of light is his oeuvre is astounding. Many more works could be mentioned to prove this point – paintings like “Cloud” [Fig. 20] or “Two Candles” [Fig. 21], or even his portraits of Max Planck and [Fig. 22 – 23] – but to do so would make this paper much longer than it should be, and I’m already over the word limit, so let’s stop here. Thanks, Mr. Richter for being the artist that you are, and for shining a light into a vast field of possibilities of what art could be.

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.gerhard-richter.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Richter http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/gerhard-richter- panorama/gerhard-richter-room-guide http://www.theartstory.org/artist-richter-gerhard.htm

Elger, D. et al (2009), Gerhard Richter – Writings, USA: D. A. P.

Godfrey, M. et al (2011), Gerhard Richter – Panorama, USA: D. A. P.

Zajonc, A. (1993), Catching the Light – The Entwined History of Light and Mind, USA: Bantam Books

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

APPENDIX

Fig. 1 – Bombers, 1963

Fig. 2 – Aunt Marianne, 1965

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 3 – Dead, 1963

Fig. 4 – The Liechti Family, 1966

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 5 – Nanni and Kitty, 1968

Fig. 6 – Ema (Nude on a Staircase), 1966 Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 7 – Reclining Nude, 1967

Fig. 8 – 192 Colors, 1966 Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 9 – 4096 Colors, 1974

Fig. 10 – Grey, 1967

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 11 – Betty, 1988

Fig. 12 – Townscape Paris, 1968

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 13 – Bühler Höhe, 1991

Fig. 14 – Sketch, 1991

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 15 – Sketch, 1991

Fig. 16 – Sketch, 1991

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 17 – Abstract Painting, 1999

Fig. 18 – Abstract Painting, 2001

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 19 – , 2007 Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 20 – Cloud, 1970

Fig. 21 – Two Candles, 1982

Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes / SVA ID# 1022862

Fig. 22 – 48 Portraits Max Panck, 1858 – 1947, 1971/72

Fig. 23 – 48 Portraits Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955, 1971/72