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to the emergence of Neo- a decade later. second offers a sensitive and engaging survey Catherine Craft’s thesis was inspired by of the following years up to 1942, during Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné, ’s claim in the preface of which he became both ‘the conservator Volume : Nos. –,  –. Edited his pioneering anthology, Dada Painters and and curator of his œuvre ’ (p.37). Duchamp’s by Dietmar Elger, with texts in German and (1951), that ‘there is a real Dada strain careful management of his reputation and of English. 512 pp. incl. 450 col. + 89 b. & w. in the minds of the of his identification with Dada during his late ills. (Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Dresden, Abstract painters that has emerged in the last career in New York is the subject of the two 2011), 248. ISBN 978–3–7757–1978–0. decade’. Motherwell’s claim, we discover, chapters of Part V. € was simply a loose way of referring to the Perhaps the strongest section of Craft’s Reviewed by JOHN-PAUL STONARD Abstract Expressionists’ realisation of how book are her three chapters devoted to the much they had to reject in the making of their work of Motherwell, arguably the most GERHARD RICHTER IS known for his assid - art. As Craft demonstrates, such a claim was underrated and thus understudied member of uous record-keeping and habit of assigning grounded in the period stereotype of Dada – the New York School. The two chapters that a number to all works – , sculpture then little known – as essentially negative con stitute Part II deal with his work on the or otherwise – that are officially part of his and destructive. Thus, when members of Dada anthology, his tactical decision ‘to quar - œuvre . This control seems to arise from works Motherwell’s circle used the term Neo-Dada antine the political issues’ (p.63) raised by the that document, as Richter once remarked, in the early 1950s to refer to the sacrificial quarrel between its chief contributors, Tristan a relation to reality characterised by ‘impre - aspect of their art, it had little connection to Tzara and Richard Huelsenbeck, and the cision, uncertainty, transience, incomplete - how the term would be used later in the book’s influence on his early work, particu - ness’. Richter published the first catalogue decade with regard to those coming out of the larly in collage. Craft’s sensitively nuanced raisonné of his works in 1969 as a print circle of . To Craft’s credit, after a portrait of ‘an unhappy man who fervently edition titled Bildverzeichnis (‘Index of Paint - lengthy consideration of the question of the wished that his unhappiness not enter his ings’). In 1986 he compiled another volume influence of Dada on the Abstract Expression - work’ (p.117) culminates in the chapter in collaboration with Dietmar Elger, at that ists, she acknowledges that the case ‘remains devoted to his career from the 1950s in Part point working as an assistant in his studio. unconvincingly murky’ (p.85). III. One is left hoping that Craft might develop Richter further experimented with the cata - Craft’s book is important not for its central these engrossing and illuminating chapters logue raisonné format, producing in 1993 a thesis but for its individual parts. The first into a monograph on Motherwell. catalogue of to date, all reproduced two chapters of Part III, ‘The Dada Strain’, Craft’s contribution to Pollock scholarship on a 1:50 scale, which has subsequently for example, include a number of discus - is an intriguing thesis offered in Chapter 8 been updated, in 1998 and 2005. He has also sions, the first of which concerns the high concerning the role played in his shift back produced a separate catalogue solely covering degree of self-consciousness demonstrated to figuration by Hans Namuth’s filming of his grey paintings. by the artists of the New York School on the him painting a picture on glass in the autumn Elger’s catalogue raisonné, the first volume topic of ‘negation’s relation to creativity’ of 1950. Craft argues that Pollock’s violent of which covers the years 1962 –68, therefore (p.102). Even more interesting, I think, is reaction to that event arose not simply from fills the gap for a more objective survey of her discussion of these artists’ new sense of the guilty feelings that he had sold out, as is Richter’s prolific output. Elger is undoubted - art history not as a chronology but as a generally assumed, but from the way that ly the right person for the job. Since the 1986 ‘simultaneity’ (p.98) of possibilities, a very being filmed through glass out of doors catalogue, he has worked extensively with fecund idea for considering not only their brought him face to face with a number of Richter, and has written an authoritative work but modernist and postmodernist art in conflicting elements in his art, particularly biography, noteworthy for the critical dis - general. that between the world of the studio and tance he establishes from his subject. Since The three chapters of Part IV, ‘The Neo- the world of nature, to which he was very 2006 he has acted as the director of the Dadaists’, deal with a host of subjects narrated attached. Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche and circulated within the art world of the The subject of Newman’s transition to his Kunstsammlung, Dresden. 1 He has unrivalled early 1950s, including the American myth of mature work is given new inflection in the access to material and an exceptional knowl - starting anew, the threat of academicism, the following chapter. Craft convincingly argues edge of his subject. emphasis on process, viewership, the absence that his 1949 visit to the Indian mounds in The catalogue is both generous in its pres - of a reliable set of standards for evaluating the southwestern Ohio sensitised him to the role entation of images (Fig.39) and information, new art, de Kooning’s invention of what a of time in his art. Thus, in his own work and concise in the selection of supporting fellow artist called ‘a language you could he attempted to couple ‘the immediacy of material. All numbered works are illustrated write your own sentences with’ (p.158), visual impact with an attenuated sense of (even those destroyed, such as cat. no.3, a Thomas B. Hess’s book Abstract Painting: engagement’ (p.143). ‘The moment of com - portrait of Adolf Hitler) and supported by Background and American Phase (1951), and munion’, which he sought, ‘required viewers full provenance, bibliography, and exhibition William Seitz’s 1955 Princeton dissertation, who were willing to give themselves over to history, studio or installation photographs, Abstract Expressionist Painting in America. These it’ (p.147). Craft suggests that the hostility of with short additional remarks, including rele - discussions, and others throughout the book, the critics and of his fellow artists to this work vant quo tations from the artist’s published offer the reader a keen sense of the content when first shown in 1951 resulted from their writings. Also included, in many cases, are that animated gossip and discussions among unwillingness to spend the kind of time the images of the source material used for the the members of the New York School in their works require. In this she is perhaps too kind. paintings or a reference to the plate in Atlas . studios, at openings, at the and I think that de Kooning’s dismissive attitude In a few cases this source material has helped at meetings of . towards Newman’s work (see p.152) and redate paintings; in others it provides infor - An Audience of Artists also adds consider - Motherwell’s characterisation of him as ‘an mation that Richter consciously excludes ably to our understanding of the individual intellectual painter’ (p.192) may be justified. 1 from the image, often the identity of the per - careers of its four chief subjects: Marcel sons depicted. Mother and daughter (B.) (no.84; Duchamp, Robert Motherwell, Jackson 1 Newman’s place in the canon depends on Green - 1965) in fact depicts Brigitte Bardot and her Pollock and Barnett Newman. The book’s berg’s exhibition of his work at French and Company, mother, as the source image reveals. At the New York, in 1959. Greenberg only asked Newman to fourteen chapters are organised into five come out of his New York retirement because Clyfford time he painted it, Richter had said, he want - parts. The two chapters of Part I are devoted Still had turned him down; see B.R. Collins: ‘Clement ed ‘on no account’ for the pair to be recog - to Duchamp. While the first provides a Greenberg and the Search for Abstract ’s nised – thirty years later, however, he could useful introduction to the work he produced Successor: A Study in the Manipulation of Avant-Garde ‘not care less’. 2 With the passing of time, as in New York between 1912 and 1918, the Consciousness’, Arts Magazine 61 (May 1987), p.38. the painting becomes historical, knowledge

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Landschaft (Italian landscape ), is from 1966, yet elsewhere Burton hails the new wave of comes at the end of those works numbered figurative painting led by artists such as John from 1967. If in some respects the numbering Button (his partner throughout the 1960s) and provides a means of ordering works in the Alex Katz. In an introduction to the seminal absence of more specific dates, it also compli - exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes cates the possibility of any detailed scholarly Become Form at the Kunsthalle Berne in 1969, work on the question of order – establishing Burton’s excitement about ‘the continuing the day by day, or at least month by month, dilation of art’s limits’ is palpable. Throughout order of the paintings. his interest is in art that is allusive, that looks Alongside an informative chronology, a beyond itself to lived experience. list of exhibitions includes a number of hith - Burton’s style excels most where he erto un-noted early shows. A bibliography to eschews academic ‘throat clearing’ (such as the present day is provided, which appears agonised definitions of terms) in favour of exhaustive (although reviews of Richter’s lyrical brevitas . Brushing aside the question of work in this Magazine from 1993, 2002, 2005 why Anne Arnold is a figurative, rather than 39. Group of people , by Gerhard Richter. 1965. and 2009 have been missed). The series of abstract, sculptor, he posits: ‘That is a donné, Canvas, 170 by 200 cm. (Private collection). five volumes are not being published in like being a natural blonde’. Yet his usually chronolo gical order: volume three appeared limpid prose gives way, on occasion, to - this summer. ic ambiguities that teeter just on the right side of the source only increases our appreciation of axiomatic: Al Held’s paintings exhibit ‘the of Richter’s rhetorical modes: erasing or 1 D. Elger: Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting , Chicago pressure of a search for a precision that would questioning identities, universalising for the 2010. be the opposite of mechanical’. 2 sake of empathy, commenting on the dis - Gerhard Richter in conversation with Sean Rain - In the book’s later sections, we see Burton tance between images and life. It is one of the bird, in exh. cat. Gerhard Richter , London (Tate Gallery) moving towards self-referential performance 1991, pp.125–26; cited in the publication under review, chief virtues of this catalogue that these p.208. texts – the foundations of his career as an sources are extensively reproduced (if in artist. He appeared in 1971 as an art critic thumbnail format) alongside the relevant lecturing on his own art. He was later to works. More information on the status of this term himself ‘a failed critic’, yet his fizzing material would have been of interest, for erudition and gift for moments of evocative example, where those images that are not in imprecision make this book a vital – and the Atlas image archive were first published. Scott Burton. Collected Writings on Art vitally personal – study of an often over- One of the most interesting questions raised and Performance –. By David J. simplified decade in American art. by this catalogue relates to Richter’s system of Getsy. 258 pp. incl. 9 col. + 7 b. & w. ills. Michael Peppiatt’s name is most closely numbering. By denying a work a number, (Soberscove Press, Chicago, 2012), $18. associated with that of Francis Bacon, the sub - Richter is not necessarily denying authorship, ISBN 978–0–9824090–4–6. ject of several of his books. In an extensive but rather excluding it from his authorised new survey of interviews, Bacon plays a brief, œuvre . As such Elger’s volume is not a com - Michael Peppiatt. Interviews with if predictably urbane, walk-on role, and we plete catalogue, and gains its peculiar scholarly Artists –. By Michael Peppiatt. are exposed to the voices of a host of other character from the omission of unnumbered 256 pp. incl. 45 b. & w. ills. (Yale University figures whom Peppiatt has encountered (and works: not only ‘failures’, ‘gifts to friends’, or Press, New Haven and London, 2012), £20. in several cases befriended) since the late those commissioned for ‘commercial purpos - ISBN 978–0–300–17662–9. 1960s. Encompassing ‘Q&A’ exchanges and es’, as Elger describes in his preface, but also longer articles, many of the interviews share all those paintings that Richter made during Reviewed by JAMES CAHILL a twilight ambience: Peppiatt’s subjects are and after his studies in East Germany, as well regularly in their eighties and nineties. as those works made in the West, before the IN OSCAR WILDE’S ‘The Critic as Artist’ the The interviews frequently become arenas first ‘official’ work – no.1 in all catalogues to writer heretically strove to dissolve the for performance and mythmaking. In one date – the painting Tisch (Table ) from 1962. boundary between art and criticism. ‘The of his prefaces, Peppiatt recalls Balthus’s ‘care - These ‘unofficial’ works are well known in the antithesis between them is entirely arbitrary’, fully stage-managed, aristocratic hauteur’. By literature, particularly in recent publications opines Gilbert, one of the two interlocutors in contrast, Henri Cartier-Bresson aims to dis - on early Richter; they also appear on the this aesthetic treatise dressed up as a Socratic mantle his popular image when he admits market, and can command high sums. dialogue. The antithesis has prevailed in two that drawing has always come first, and that A section on these apocryphal works perennial forms of art journalism – the inter - photography is ‘instant drawing, really, like would have been an interesting and useful view and the review. Yet recent anthologies instant coffee’. And of course, contradictions addition to the current catalogue – not least of each genre show them to be at their best abound between the equally dogmatic pro - to show where Richter draws his aesthetic where they threaten to merge. nouncements of different artists. For Avigdor boundaries, and how he decides on the Scott Burton, who died in 1989, is remem - Arikha, for example, anything that is not system of numbering, which remains a rela - bered primarily for furniture sculptures and drawn from life is an aberration; for Dado, tively opaque aspect of the otherwise seem - performances which dismantled the art –life drawing is vital as a ‘way out of life’. Such ingly transparent presentation of works. The divide, but he also worked as a critic and insights can seem as polished stones within choice of inclusion is, for example, not nec - lecturer on the American art scene from the a quagmire. But ironically, some of the pro - essarily a matter of media. Most of the works 1960s to the mid-1970s. In the introduction to foundest remarks deal with the very problem listed in this first volume are paintings, along this new collection of his reviews and essays, of indefinability, and of the mutability of ‘per - with a few sculptures, but there are also a David J. Getsy proposes that Burton’s ‘distaste spective’. R.B. Kitaj admits: ‘Certain pictures number of drawings, such as no.147-3, a for narrowly normative and canonical values’ bore me now, and I want to interpret them pencil drawing of two women on a sofa. It is as a critic prefigures the demotic spirit of his differently. I even revise the intentions I had not immediately clear to the reader whether art. Undoubtedly, a non-hierarchical sensibil - when I did them’. As if concurring, Jean Richter has dismissed all other drawings, or ity pervades Burton’s writing and sees him Dubuffet (interviewed ten years earlier in whether they exist in a separate catalogue. ranging between aesthetic camps. The earliest 1977), proposes that ‘we live in mental fictions The numbering is generally chronological, texts celebrate Tony Smith’s investment of – in the conventions that have been imposed although not always – no.167-2, Italienische minimalist form with emotional charge, while on us’.

632 september 2013 • clv • the burlington magazine