Gerhard Richter

Galerie Liliane et Michel Durand-Dessert, Paris
Massimo De Martino, Lugano
Galerie Guy Ledune, Brussels
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1994

Paris, Galerie Liliane et Michel Durand-Dessert, Gerhard Richter, 1991, n.p., illustrated in colour
London, Tate Gallery, Gerhard Richter, 1991-92, p. 107, no. 60, illustrated in colour
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Gerhard Richter, 1993-94, p. 159, no. 747-1, illustrated in colour 

Angelika Thill, et al., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné, 1962-1993, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, Vol. II, p. 98, illustrated and Vol. III, no. 747-1, illustrated in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Vienna, Museumsquartier Messepalast; Hamburg, Deichtorhallen, Der zerbrochene Spiegel; Positionen zur Malerei, 1993, pp. 60-61
Peter Gidal, 'Endless Finalities', in: Parkett, no. 35, 1993, p. 44, illustrated in colour

When Richter turned to painting his Abstraktes Bild in the mid 1970s, he looked in detail at the history of abstraction. Not as a homage seeking to emulate abstract compositions in the manner of the Abstract Expressionists or the Ecole de Paris artists but rather to challenge the very form and relevance of their painterly vocabulary within the wider forum of the of the science of representation. Taking the pillars of abstraction - colour, gesture and form – and exploring them as formal rather than spiritual elements, he employed them in a more knowing Post Modern manner; one that was fully attentive to their evocative capacity and associative meanings. In much the same way that Roy Lichtenstein had taken the ‘theory of the Brushstroke’, isolated it and re-presented it to the point whereby it no longer represented an expressionist gesture but a carefully studied, subjective motif in itself, Richter too in his Abstrakt paintings was quoting from his predecessors whilst demystifying paint’s spiritual allusions and accentuating its material nature.

 

During the 1960s, alongside his early Photobased paintings, he had developed other, increasingly abstract modes for the examination of visual perception. The Cityscapes, the mirrors, the Grey paintings and Colour Charts – all of these represented different examinations of the mechanics of painting, each precariously balanced on the line conventionally separating abstract and figurative modes of expression. By the time he embarked upon his fully Abstract Paintings, Richter sought to expand the painterly realm into embracing the actual process of looking – into uncovering the elusiveness of reality in all its various forms.

 

Executed in 1991, Abstraktes Bild is the first of four pivotal paintings executed that year that are testament to Richter’s ceaseless technical explorations in the field of abstraction  and attests to the painterly and intellectual elasticity unique to Richter’s work. The painting is also the most manifest expression of Richter’s intensive skill as a colourist and on this basis it is difficult to imagine an artist greater than him in this discipline in modern art history. Choosing a panoply of arresting reds and oranges, the surface of this painting is regularly interrupted to reveal tantalising glimpses of hot yellows and lush green. Although spontaneous in their lyrical grandeur, this orchestra of overlaid marks are infact carefully orchestrated, built up in powerful sweeps of thick impasto. Their colours seem to glide across the painting and enshroud the background in a beautiful atmosphere of trompe l’oeil which lends the painting an intriguing sense of depth. Additionally, this creates the impression of a three dimensional plane between the viewer and the picture ground which lies beneath.

 

 The relationship of the cool, flat surface of this painting with its intensely harmonious colouring with the painterly gestures and the shapes beneath is intentionally never quite certain or mappable. The diversity of Richter’s approaches within this single canvas reveals the tension between his physical enjoyment of paint on the one hand and his intellectual analysis of it on the other. For Richter, the art of painting is both a deeply problematic and moral obligation. Aside from being a compulsive channel for personal expression, it is a means for him to explore the easily overlooked concepts of perception, ideology and belief through which we construct the world surrounding us. Like his photobased paintings which underline the role of pictures in understanding the fictive nature of reality, his abstract paintings similarly avoid and confront problems of representation simultaneously. They instantaneously expose their own artificiality and weaknesses, offering approximations of reality which are enigmatically familiar yet ones we can never truly comprehend. “Every time we describe an event, add up a column of figures or take a photograph of a tree, we create a model…. Abstract paintings are fictitious models because they visualise a reality which we can neither see nor describe but which we may nevertheless conclude exists. We attach negative names to this reality, the un-known, the un-graspable, the infinite, and for thousands of years we have developed it in terms of substitute images like heaven and hell, gods and devils.” (Gerhard Richter in Exhibition Catalogue, Documenta 7: Gerhard Richter, 1982, n.p)

 

Abstraktes Bild is amongst Richter’s most vibrant abstract paintings from the early 1990s and together with the other three paintings that he initially produced alongside it, tantalisingly acts as a precursor to two major series of abstract paintings widely considered as masterpieces in the artist’s oeuvre. The first series is commonly known as the Bach suite of 1992-93 (Thill, nos. 785-788, Moderne Museet, Stockholm), and contains technical passages of virtuosity similarly found in the current work. The other is the unforgettable group of six paintings he completed in 1998, all titled Abstract Picture (Rhombus) that now belong to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Together these series of works see Richter engaging with a quite different attitude towards his abstract technique of the 1980s. Unlike many of the 80s works that used a squeegee method to pull off a number of layers of top paint to reveal passages of other colours below, these paintings are more harmonious and in many ways engaged closely with music. Seldom have colours so luxurious and so punishing appeared in the same painting, and they coalesce to achieve paintings of stunning beauty. In these paintings, the awkward materialism of his earlier experiments in building up the surfaces of his Art Informel paintings with torn or rumpled fabric and heavy pigments achieves a long sought-after fluency.

 

Trying to find precursors to this type of abstraction is practically impossible. Richter has long talked of pivotal painters in the history of art and his continuing conflicts with their work. Of particular interest is his relation to Rothko and there are elements in the appreciation of the present work not dissimilar to the deep tonal resonances of a great Rothko painting. Richter was for many years ambiguous towards Rothko’s art, at once admiring its seriousness whilst distrusting it and feeling it too decorative. However the paintings of the early 90s display less antagonism towards the holy, to the spiritual experience one feels in front of this work. In short, the painting of this work marked a sea-change indicating that Richter was now prepared to entertain the idea that the sentiments abstraction awakens need not be judged on logical grounds, but rather on their psychological resonance. Abstraction cannot claim to embody the absolute as it did for Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, to the Abstract Expressionists, but it can lend substance to otherwise elusive aspects about our makeup.

 

Abstraktes Bild is characterised by a feeling of density, confusion and romance, but also intense colouristic harmony, lyrical and tonal resonances. These myriad details compressed upon and beneath the painting’s surface both reveal and undermine the perceptual depth of the painting. The interplay of colours and the complex layering of the colour are deliberately ambiguous, seeming to both reveal and conceal at the same time. Richter revels here in obscuring any area that might give even a subliminal sense of horizon or object - an embodiment of his belief that what we think of as reality is ultimately as fictitious as painting: that both are mere models for understanding the world. The lively colours he uses enhance this artificiality, as does the application of painting which is smooth, leaving little evidence of the artist’s involvement. Unlike the ferocious marks of an action painter, here the layers of colour are painstakingly built with a cool objectivity. In creating this work Richter would have worked on the other works from the quartet simultaneously, moving from one to another thus constantly refreshing his point of view and removing any sense of autobiography or illustration from the works. Created using a myriad of implements to apply the paint from brushes, the artist’s palette to planks of wood dragged across the surface, the surface evokes the artistic processes that created it and the intellectual rigour applied to this process.

 

Unlike the majority of Abstract expression which is infused with the angst and fury of the artist, Richter here adopts the mentality of a scientist to formulate a physical response to his own rhetorical question: “What shall I paint? How shall I paint? ‘What’ is the hardest thing, because it is the essence. ‘How’ is easy by comparison. To start off with the ‘How’ is frivolous, but legitimate. Apply the How and thus use the requirements of the technique, the material and the physical possibilities, in order to realise the intention. The intention: to invent nothing – no idea, no composition, no form – and to receive everything: composition, object, form, idea, picture.” (Gerhard Richter quoted in Hans-Ulbrecht Obrist, ed., Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting. Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London 1995, p. 129)

 

This objective approach to assembling Abstraktes Bild is mirrored in his scientific interest in exploring the evocation of emotion in the viewer. Although constructed to remain devoid of any explicit meaning, the kaleidoscope of colours and techniques act as subliminal triggers for emotional responses, revealing an innate colourist sensitivity. Despite their appearance, the reds, greens, yellows and blues have not been juxtaposed with chance, frenetic gesture but with the artful analysis of what emotional response these juxtapositions would provoke. This degree of control echoes the subtle manipulation of his photopaintings, which although based around an arbitrary, found source images were frequently enhanced to affect their compulsive appeal to the viewer.

 

In Abstraktes Bild, Richter is not bearing his soul, nor even offering a glimpse of it. Rather, by controlling the composition though careful juxtaposition of colour and form, he deconstructs the process of painting to expose the false illusions underlying the notion of the artist as alchemist or shaman; the painterly equivalent of revealing the puppeteer’s invisible strings.