DOCSLIB.ORG

Gerhard Richter: the Top-Selling Living Artist - WSJ.Com

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Gerhard Richter: the Top-Selling Living Artist - WSJ.Com Gerhard Richter: The Top-Selling Living Artist - WSJ.com http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702047818... Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com See a sample reprint in PDF format. Order a reprint of this article now ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Updated March 10, 2012, 5:14 p.m. ET The Top-Selling Living Artist Last year at auction, German painter Gerhard Richter outsold Monet, Giacometti and Rothko—combined. A case study of an artist's rise. Will it last? By KELLY CROW In the early 1980s, German artist Gerhard Richter painted 24 views of flickering white candles, and not a single one sold. When one of those "Candle" canvases came up at Christie's in London this past fall, it sold for $16.5 million. Few people can pinpoint the moment when an artist becomes iconic in the way of Pablo Picasso or Andy Warhol, but right now the art world is trying to anoint Mr. Richter. Last year, his works sold at auction for a total of $200 million, according to auction tracker Artnet—more than any other living artist and topping last year's auction totals for Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti and Mark Rothko combined. At Mr. Richter's gallery in New York, the waiting list for one of his new works, which can sell for $3 million apiece, is several dozen names long. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images A visitor at the blockbuster retrospective 'Gerhard In November at Sotheby's, London collector Lily Safra paid Richter: Panorama' at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie; it $20.8 million for Mr. Richter's 1997 eggplant-colored "Abstract will travel to Paris in June. Painting," an auction record for the artist. Other artists have sold individual works at higher prices—Jeff Koons, for example—but in terms of volume at auction, Mr. Richter currently tops the market. The artist's ascent is being driven by market demands as much Related as curatorial merit: Auction houses and museums, eager for The Art of the Tablet new masters to canonize, are showcasing Mr. Richter's works around the world at an ever-increasing clip. An influx of international collectors and dealers are also seizing the moment to buy or sell his pieces at a profit—including art-world tastemakers such as Russian industrialist Roman Abramovich, French luxury-goods executive Bernard Arnault, dealer Larry Gagosian, Taiwanese electronics mogul Pierre Chen and New York hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen. Mr. Richter's work is uniquely suited to the tastes of the current art market. Like Picasso, he paints in a number of different styles—from rainbow-hued abstracts to poignant family portraits—giving collectors plenty of choice. Like Warhol, he is prolific, which ensures a steady volume of his works in the 1 of 5 3/11/12 8:06 PM Gerhard Richter: The Top-Selling Living Artist - WSJ.com http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702047818... marketplace—yet enough of his works are in museum collections that he has avoided a glut. And ever since the deaths Germany's Gerhard Richter's artworks sold at auction last year of painters Cy Twombly and Lucian Freud, collectors last year for a total of $176 million, more than any other searching for another senior statesman have started giving his living artist. Kelly Crow has a profile of Richter and his work on Lunch Break. Photo: Sotheby's work a closer look. Collectors are paying a particular premium for Mr. Richter's larger abstracts from the late 1980s, which have all the visual impact of a work by Francis Bacon or Mr. Rothko, artists whose prices spiked before the recession. These abstracts are also immediately identifiable as being Mr. Richter's creations, making them easy status symbols. San Francisco dealer Anthony Meier says, "Collectors want an iconic work in a format that everyone recognizes. Monkey see, monkey do." Getty Images Mr. Richter, 80 years old, isn't a household name in the U.S. German artist Gerhard Richter. yet, but he's revered in Europe. Born in Dresden, he fled the former East Germany months before the Berlin Wall went up. He has spent the past six decades experimenting with ways to Related Video refresh traditional painting categories like the still life. He's best known for haunting family portraits that evoke smudged newspaper clippings—a wry response to Pop that won him a pre-eminent spot among Europe's postwar painters. He also uses an oversized squeegee the size of a car bumper to create layered abstracts. That he flits between several painting styles, rather than sticking to one signature look, has always confounded some audiences, yet the toggling is actually his calling card, the painter as polymath. The tiny, oil-rich country of Qatar recently rocked the art world by paying more than $250 million dollars for a A blockbuster retrospective, "Gerhard Richter: Panorama," has Cezanne, the highest price ever for a work of art at auction. And while eye-popping numbers like that might been crisscrossing the art capitals of Europe, having just get you thinking about investing in art, it is certainly not traveled from London's Tate Modern to Berlin's Neue for everyone. Kelsey Hubbard asks Christie's art expert Lydia Fenet about art as an investment. Nationalgalerie, where it will show through May 13. So far, the show has drawn large crowds; it heads to Paris's Centre Pompidou in June. For his part, Mr. Richter seems a reluctant commodity. At a time when superstar artists typically have a different dealer for every continent, he funnels nearly all his new works through New York dealer Marian Goodman. Both are soft-spoken and rarely attend high-profile auctions. The pair has declined lucrative licensing deals and private commissions. For years, their combined efforts have helped his price levels retain an air of integrity. Ms. Goodman, speaking on behalf of the artist, who declined to be interviewed himself, said, "He has an honest market." Not everyone is ready to bet on Mr. Richter. Jose Mugrabi and David Nahmad, major dealers in Warhol and Picasso, respectively, said they don't think Mr. Richter has enough heft to compete with the market presence of those modern masters. Mr. Mugrabi said Mr. Richter's art is more fashionable now than it used to be, but not more important. Trends in contemporary art, as in fashion, can also change quickly, so it's unclear whether Mr. Richter's prices will keep climbing or drop again over the long run. In the late 1980s, Ol auf Holz Museum Ludwig, Koln;ln/Privatsammlung © 2 of 5 3/11/12 8:06 PM Gerhard Richter: The Top-Selling Living Artist - WSJ.com http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702047818... Gerhard Richter 2012 prices for Frank Stella's geometric paintings rose quickly to Mr. Richter has created more than 3,000 paintings, but nearly 40% of them (including 'Betty,' pictured nearly $4 million before reaching a plateau in 1989 that he here) are in museum collections, which has prevented hasn't matched at auction since. Mr. Rothko's abstract paintings a market glut. also soared to $72.8 million during the market's last peak in 2007, but nothing by him has sold for half as much in the past couple of years. Art adviser Nicolai Frahm says he's counseling his collector clients to hold off seeking Mr. Richter's works "until his prices equalize." Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, said he thinks such lofty comparisons to Picasso and Warhol will hold up, though. "Richter doesn't want to be the next king, but he has taken painting farther than just about anyone else," he said. Richter's Rise Mr. Richter works out of a pair of pristine studios in Cologne, including one attached by a garden path to the home he shares with his third wife, Sabine, and their young son, Moritz. Mr. Sotheby's Richter suffered a stroke a few years ago, but he remains fit and Russian industrialist Roman Abramovich is among the moves easily, his face framed by a jaunty pair of translucent influential collectors who have helped to make Mr. Richter's market. Mr. Abramovich paid $15.1 million eyeglasses. for Mr. Richter's 1990 'Abstract Painting' at Sotheby's. The son of a Dresden schoolteacher, Mr. Richter grew up in communist East Germany, steeped in the academic rigors of Soviet Realism. Some of his first jobs included painting murals of cheery workers for the state. In 1959, he saw Western contemporary art for the first time at an exhibition called Documenta in the German town of Kassel; afterward, he told friends he would have to rethink what he knew about art after seeing Jackson Pollock's drippy splatters and Lucio Fontana's punctured canvases. Two years later, he and his wife, Ema, enlisted a friend to sneak them by car into West Berlin so he could study art without political constraint. The couple moved to Düsseldorf, and by the end of the summer the Berlin Wall had gone up. He never saw his parents again. Over the next decade, the artist grappled with occasional homesickness—and the legacy of his country's role in the war—by painting portraits of his relatives that looked like black- and-white photographs, only hazy. The subjects included his Sotheby's Part of Mr. Richter's appeal to collectors: He paints in "Aunt Marianne," who was exterminated by the Nazis because a wide range of styles, from colorful abstracts to hazy she was mentally ill, and his "Uncle Rudi," a Nazi soldier who portraits.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Jerusalem As Trauerarbeit on Two Paintings by Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter
    Jerusalem as Trauerarbeit 59 Chapter 3 Jerusalem as Trauerarbeit On Two Paintings by Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter Wouter Weijers In 1986, Anselm Kiefer produced a painting he entitled Jerusalem (Fig. 3.1). It is a large and heavy work measuring approximately thirteen by eighteen feet. When viewed up close, the surface is reminiscent of abstract Matter Painting. Liquid lead was applied, left to solidify and then scraped off again in places, ripping the work’s skin. When the work is viewed from a distance, a high hori- zon with a golden glow shining over its centre appears, which, partly due to the title, could be interpreted as a reference to a heavenly Jerusalem. Two metal skis are attached to the surface, which, as Fremdkörper, do not enter into any kind of structural or visual relationship with the painting Eleven years later, Gerhard Richter painted a much smaller work that, although it was also given the title Jerusalem, was of a very different order (Fig. 3.2). The painting shows us a view of a sun-lit city. But again Jerusalem is hardly recognizable because Richter has let the city dissolve in a hazy atmo- sphere, which is, in effect, the result of a painting technique using a fine, dry brush in paint that has not yet completely dried. It is the title that identifies the city. Insiders might be able to recognize the western wall of the old city in the lit-up strip just below the horizon, but otherwise all of the buildings have dis- appeared in the haze.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Architectural Theory Is the First Critical History of a Ma Architectural Thought Over the Last Forty Years
    a ND M a LLGR G OOD An Introduction to Architectural Theory is the first critical history of a ma architectural thought over the last forty years. Beginning with the VE cataclysmic social and political events of 1968, the authors survey N the criticisms of high modernism and its abiding evolution, the AN INTRODUCT rise of postmodern and poststructural theory, traditionalism, New Urbanism, critical regionalism, deconstruction, parametric design, minimalism, phenomenology, sustainability, and the implications of AN INTRODUCTiON TO new technologies for design. With a sharp and lively text, Mallgrave and Goodman explore issues in depth but not to the extent that they become inaccessible to beginning students. ARCHITECTURaL THEORY i HaRRY FRaNCiS MaLLGRaVE is a professor of architecture at Illinois Institute of ON TO 1968 TO THE PRESENT Technology, and has enjoyed a distinguished career as an award-winning scholar, translator, and editor. His most recent publications include Modern Architectural HaRRY FRaNCiS MaLLGRaVE aND DaViD GOODmaN Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673–1968 (2005), the two volumes of Architectural ARCHITECTUR Theory: An Anthology from Vitruvius to 2005 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005–8, volume 2 with co-editor Christina Contandriopoulos), and The Architect’s Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity, and Architecture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). DaViD GOODmaN is Studio Associate Professor of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology and is co-principal of R+D Studio. He has also taught architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and at Boston Architectural College. His work has appeared in the journal Log, in the anthology Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives, and in the Northwestern University Press publication Walter Netsch: A Critical Appreciation and Sourcebook.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report 2018
    2018 Annual Report 4 A Message from the Chair 5 A Message from the Director & President 6 Remembering Keith L. Sachs 10 Collecting 16 Exhibiting & Conserving 22 Learning & Interpreting 26 Connecting & Collaborating 30 Building 34 Supporting 38 Volunteering & Staffing 42 Report of the Chief Financial Officer Front cover: The Philadelphia Assembled exhibition joined art and civic engagement. Initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and shaped by hundreds of collaborators, it told a story of radical community building and active resistance; this spread, clockwise from top left: 6 Keith L. Sachs (photograph by Elizabeth Leitzell); Blocks, Strips, Strings, and Half Squares, 2005, by Mary Lee Bendolph (Purchased with the Phoebe W. Haas fund for Costume and Textiles, and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection, 2017-229-23); Delphi Art Club students at Traction Company; Rubens Peale’s From Nature in the Garden (1856) was among the works displayed at the 2018 Philadelphia Antiques and Art Show; the North Vaulted Walkway will open in spring 2019 (architectural rendering by Gehry Partners, LLP and KXL); back cover: Schleissheim (detail), 1881, by J. Frank Currier (Purchased with funds contributed by Dr. Salvatore 10 22 M. Valenti, 2017-151-1) 30 34 A Message from the Chair A Message from the As I observe the progress of our Core Project, I am keenly aware of the enormity of the undertaking and its importance to the Museum’s future. Director & President It will be transformative. It will not only expand our exhibition space, but also enhance our opportunities for community outreach.
    [Show full text]
  • Drawing the Intersections of Exhibition, Media, Performance and Architecture Lawrence Paul Wallen University of Wollongong
    University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2012 A grammar of space - drawing the intersections of exhibition, media, performance and architecture Lawrence Paul Wallen University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Wallen, Lawrence Paul, A grammar of space - drawing the intersections of exhibition, media, performance and architecture, Doctor of Creative Arts thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 2012. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3689 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Faculty of Creative Arts A GRAMMAR OF SPACE Drawing the Intersections of Exhibition, Media, Performance and Architecture Lawrence Paul Wallen Bachelor of Architecture (1st Class Honours) RMIT Master of Architecture (Research) RMIT This thesis is presented as part of the requirements for the Award of the Degree of Doctor of Creative Arts of the University of Wollongong March 2012 i ABSTRACT ‘A Grammar of Space’ refers to the search for the first memory of space, and to the construction of a framework that explains artistic approaches to space, through the process of reflecting on a spatial practice. The research asks what is the interstitial space between image and text? It is this junction, potent in contemporary practice, that I argue underpins my artistic research. This is both an artistic and scholarly investigation, and it engages with my search for the origin of (cultural) memory as manifested in works from a range of media: architecture, installation, scenography, drawing, and time-based media. The study is distinctive in its exploration of a contemporary global trajectory as it traces geographic, psychological and cultural landscapes as it revisits central works created in Europe, Australia, Asia and New Zealand since 1992.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletter Outubro 10 | October10
    Newsletter Outubro 10 | October10 Solo JOHN BALDESSARI Pure Beauty Curadores | Curators Enrico Lunghi, Clément Minighetti Metropolitan Museum of Art . Nova Iorque . EUA | New York . USA 20 Outubro a 9 Janeiro | 20 October to 9 January http://www.metmuseum.org Group YONAMINE A República revisitada Curadores | Curators Pedro Lapa Artistas | Artists Ângela Ferreira, Gabriel Abrantes, João Tabarra, João Fonte Santa, João Pedro Vale, Luciana Fina, Mafalda Santos, Pedro Barateiro. Galeria Diário de Notícias . Lisboa | Lisbon . Portugal 7 a 29 Outubro | 7 to 29 October Group JOHN BALDESSARI . LAWRENCE WEINER Just Love Me . Regard sur une collection privée Curadores | Curators Enrico Lunghi, Clément Minighetti Artistas | Artists Curtis Anderson, Vanessa Beecroft, Tracey Emin, Günther Förg, Rebecca Horn, Sol Lewitt, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Nora Schattauer, Luc Tuymans, Andy Warhol, (...). MUDAM . Luxemburgo | Luxembourg 9 Outubro a 30 Janeiro 2011 | 9 October to 30 January 2011 http://www.mudam.lu Group DANIEL MALHÃO Falemos de casas: Entre o Norte e o Sul Curadores | Curators Ana Vaz Milheiro, Diogo Seixas Lopes, James Peto, Luís Santiago Baptista, Manuel Graça Dias, Max Risselada, Pedro Pacheco e Peter Cook. Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa . Museu Colecção Berardo . Lisboa | Lisbon . Portugal 14 Outubro a 16 Janeiro 2011 | 14 October to16 Janeiro 2011 http://www.trienaldelisboa.com Group JULIÃO SARMENTO . JUAN ARAUJO . Quando a arte fala de arquitectura: construir, desconstruir, habitar Curador | Curator Delfim Sardo Artistas | Artists Ângela Ferreira, Bruce Nauman, Damian Ortega, Dan Graham, Fernanda Fragateiro, Gordon Matta-Clark, Olafur Etiasson, Rita McBride, Robert Gober, (...). Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa . MNAC . Museu do Chiado . Lisboa | Lisbon . Portugal 15 Outubro a 21 Novembro | 15 October to 21 November http://www.trienaldelisboa.com Group INTERIORES Project by Pedro Gadanho Artistas | Artists Filipa César, João Paulo Feliciano, Daniel Malhão, Edgar Martins e Fernando Guerra.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Storr
    Thursday, April 15, 2010, 7 pm 7 2010, 15, April Thursday, Robert Storr: The Art of Sufficiency After a Time of Excess of Time a After Sufficiency of Art The Storr: Robert 2010 Sandra Garrard Memorial Lecture Series Lecture Memorial Garrard Sandra 2010 Newcomb Art Department Woldenberg Art Center Tulane University New Orleans, LA 70118 504.865-5327 www.tulane.edu/~art Robert Storr Sandra GarrardMemorial Lecture Robert Storr artist, critic and curator 2010 Sandra Garrard Memorial Lecture Series Robert Storr: The Art of Suffiency Robert Storr is an artist, critic and curator who teaches painting and After a Time of Excess drawing at Yale University School of Art, where he currently serves as Dean. Formerly the Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Mu- seum of Modern Art in New York where he worked from 1990 to 2002, he was, in addition, the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2002-2006) and the first Thursday, April 15th, 7 pm American to be appointed Director of the Venice Biennale (2007). His Reception immediately following in Woodward Way essays and columns appear in Art in America, Artforum, Artpress, and Parkett. He is the author of numerous catalogues, articles and books, in- cluding monographs on Louise Bourgeois, Gerhard Richter and Philip Guston. He lectures and contributes to museum and exhibitions catalogs worldwide. Montine McDaniel Freeman Auditorium Woldenberg Art Center Newcomb Art Department Tulane University cover image: Deborah Kass America’s Most Wanted, Robert S., 1998 The lecture is free and open to the public.
    [Show full text]
  • Read Complete Essay
    GERMAN ART NOW HAVE AN EXPIRATION DATE In art as in love, instinct is enough. by Anatole France Gerhard Richter’s “Abstraktes Bild,”(1986) which sold for more than $46 million at Sotheby’s London 2015. 48,000 citizens and 11 former directors of major German museums were seriously disregarded by Germany’s Culture Minister Monika Grütters. Amongst polemic swirls, heated debates and even artist’s threats, the German Bundesrat ratified a new law on Friday 8th July 2016, implementing unprecedented controls over the country’s art market. Based on the new legislation, works of art which are over the age of half a century and priced greater than !150,000 euros will need special permission to become offered outdoors from the EU. Inside the EU, an export permit is required for works over the age of 75 and surpassing the !300,000 euros cost. This law stipulates that, within the situation of the blocked purchase, the dealership can involve a government evaluator who will recommend a suitable cost for that work. The only exception to the rule WWW.ARTEMUNDI.COM 1 comes after having received serious threats from high-caliber artists such as Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter of pulling their work from German museums. Thus, the final law allows living artists to opt out of these export license requirements. Just like some of the most terrible ideas, this law had its origins within a good intention. Incipiently, this law was inspired by the UNESCO cultural protection law, concerned by the destruction of cultural heritage sites like Palmyra, and the looting of national museums, selling items around the underground community and filling their coffers using the revenues.1 This new law would diminish the flow of the illegal sale of the antiques, which is thriving because of the barbarity of the Islamic State in the Middle East.
    [Show full text]
  • Gerhard Richter
    GERHARD RICHTER Born in 1932, Dresden Lives and works in Cologne EDUCATION 1951-56 Studied painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Dresden 1961 Continued his studies at the Fine Arts Academy in Düsseldorf 2001 Doctoris honoris causa of the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2017 About Painting S.M.A.K Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent 2016 Selected Editions, Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf 2014 Pictures/Series. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen 2013 Tepestries, Gagosian, London 2012 Unique Editions and Graphics, Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach Atlas, Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden Das Prinzip des Seriellen, Galerie Springer & Winckler, Berlin Panorama, Neue und Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin Editions 1965–2011, me Collectors Room, Berlin Survey, Museo de la Ciudad, Quito Survey, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango del Banco de la República, Bogotá Seven Works, Portland Art Museum, Portland Beirut, Beirut Art Center, Beirut Painting 2012, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, NY Ausstellungsraum Volker Bradtke, Düsseldorf Drawings and Watercolours 1957–2008, Musée du Louvre, Paris 2011 Images of an Era, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg Sinbad, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY Survey, Caixa Cultural Salvador, Salvador Survey, Caixa Cultural Brasilia, Brasilia Survey, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo Survey, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli, Porto Alegre Glass and Pattern 2010–2011, Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich Editions and Overpainted Photographs,
    [Show full text]
  • Beyeler Collection / Cooperations October 18, 2017 - January 1, 2018
    Media release, October 17, 2017 Beyeler Collection / Cooperations October 18, 2017 - January 1, 2018 “Cooperations” is the third and final presentation in this year’s series of three exhibitions marking the twentieth anniversary of the Fondation Beyeler. It focuses on the possible ways in which the Beyeler Collection could be extended in the future through permanent loans, acquisitions and donations. Artists closely associated with the museum have been invited, together with collectors and representatives of artists’ estates, to temporarily exhibit masterpieces from their holdings alongside works from the Beyeler Collection. This idea of the museum collection as dynamic and open to change is linked to the exploration of possibilities for presenting the collection. The forms of presentation in the first three rooms have a traditional character, in terms of the arrangement of the individual objects and works and of the exhibition environment. The itinerary begins with a unique presentation in the first room—like a museum within a museum—which is based on the historical model of the Wunderkammer, the origins of the museum. Works from the collection are combined with other loans, above all those of a Basel private collection, in a way that celebrates the great tradition of collecting and the collecting instinct, fostered by an interest in the distinctive, the aesthetically stimulating, the unusual, and the curious. Thus, we find on display the tooth of a narwhal, formerly assumed to be the horn of a unicorn. A particular highlight is provided by works of African and Oceanic art from the Beyeler Collection, augmented by outstanding loans, such as a Malagan mask from the Musée Barbier-Mueller in Geneva and other important exhibits from a New York private collection.
    [Show full text]
  • GERHARD RICHTER: Abstract Paintings, 2009
    M A R I A N G O O D M A N G A L L E R Y GERHARD RICHTER: Abstract Paintings, 2009 Saturday, November 7, 2009 - January 9, 2010 Opening Reception: Saturday November 7th, 6-8 pm The Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by Gerhard Richter which will open to the public on Saturday, November 7th , and will be on view through January 9th, 2010. On view will be a major representation of works made by the artist from 2005 to the present, including an important new cycle of paintings titled Sindbad , 2008 as well as individual paintings presenting medium to large format abstractions, and a new group of large scale near-monochrome paintings whose underlying chromatic structures are layered by translucent veils of white paint. The exhibition will be the most recent presentation of the artist’s work in New York since his solo exhibition at Marian Goodman NY in 2005. During the past two decades Gerhard Richter has made several important cycles of abstract paintings. The current exhibition follows on other recent series of abstract works by Richter, including the Silicate paintings of 2003; the Cage paintings of 2006, conceived as a single coherent group and first displayed in 2007 at the 52nd Venice Biennale curated by Rob Storr; and a recent group of white abstract works exhibited at Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris in 2008. A fully illustrated catalogue, Gerhard Richter: Abstract Paintings, 2009 will be published on the occasion of the exhibition and will include a new text by Benjamin H.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Belief: Chance, Authorship, and the Limits of Comprehension in Gerhard Richter's Strip
    religions Article Beyond Belief: Chance, Authorship, and the Limits of Comprehension in Gerhard Richter’s Strip James Romaine Art Department, Lander University, Greenwood, SC 29649, USA; [email protected] Received: 2 February 2019; Accepted: 12 April 2019; Published: 17 April 2019 Abstract: For nearly six decades, Gerhard Richter has challenged the conceptual and visual limits of contemporary painting. His 2011 work Strip overloads the viewer’s visual perception. Richter created this unique digital print using a process that deliberately employs chance to circumvent the artist’s authorship. This article examines the history of Richter’s skepticism of creative authority and the strategies he has developed to realize an art that exceeds the limits of human skill and imagination. Although he remains an atheist, Richter frames his pursuit of an incomprehensible art in terms of a longing for a belief in God. Keywords: Gerhard Richter; contemporary painting; Strip; chance; belief; skepticism; authorship; abstract painting; Cologne Cathedral window Strip (921-6) is a unique digital print by Gerhard Richter.1 This sensational 2011 work, in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern, London, is arguably one of the most conceptually fresh and art historically important works by the contemporary German artist. In both its visual presence and the process of its creation, Strip evidences an organic life that exceeds the limits of the artist’s authorship and the viewer’s perception. It is a model of a reality in which creativity and chance realize an other-worldly beauty that is the materialization of what Richter called, “the highest form of hope.”2 According to Richter, our capacity to believe in the existence of something greater than ourselves, something that is incomprehensible to the human mind, is our greatest human characteristic.
    [Show full text]
  • Readymade Digital Colour: an Expanding Subject for Painting
    READYMADE DIGITAL COLOUR: AN EXPANDING SUBJECT FOR PAINTING Doctorate of Philosophy DAVID SERISIER 2013 College of Fine Arts University of New South Wales ORIGINALITY STATEMENT ‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’ Signed ................................................................. Date ................................................................. ii COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).
    [Show full text]