Lot Essay
To look into the nocturnal sky has since time immemorial provoked a sense of awe and wonderment in the minds of our forefathers. The mysterious glow of the celestial heavens illuminating the dark night was generally explained as a manifestation of the Divine. Particularly, the German Romantic movement, and most specifically Caspar David Friedrich, can be said to have taken this theme of "sacralising the profane" as a central motif in painting.
Clearly situating himself within this tradition, yet subverting it at the same time, Gerhard Richter's Sternbild no longer operates within a framework in which nature can be unquestionably seen as a carrier of symbolic or Divine meaning. Richter commentated on his use of nature in art:
"For me it is also a bit about recalling or probing a dream. Which always comes out very strangely, because, of course, we're not naive." (As quoted in: Ex. Cat. London, Hayward Gallery, The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, p. 462).
This sense of a loss of innocence towards visual representation, is underlined by the use of photography, rather than nature itself, as the basis of Richter's image. The painting becomes a representation of a photograph of the celestial heavens, thus removing it twice from the original subject.
"Photography, which we all use so frequently, surprised me. I was suddenly able to see it in a different way, as an image that transmitted a different look, without the conventional criteria that I used to attach to art. There was no style, no composition, no judgment. It liberated me from personal experience. There was nothing but a pure image. As a result, I wished to possess it and represent it - not to use it as a means for painting, but to use painting as a means for photography." (Interview with Rolf Schön, 1974, quoted in: Antoine, Koch & Lang, Gerhard Richter, Paris 1995, p. 57).
Using photography as a Duchampian "readymade", allowed Richter to treat the starry sky as a pure surface, as if it were an abstract image (see fig. 1). This knowing reference towards Abstract Expressionism and the maxim of the all-over surface, impenetrable to perspectival illusionism, is evidenced in the varying appearance of Richter's paintings in the Star Picture series; for the present painting is only one of two paintings in the series where the image was initially traced from an astronomy atlas. Alongside these "representational" star images, a number of paintings, some stippled to suggest stars, others just covered in swirls, coexist, suggesting Richter's understanding that the celestial sky, with its mystical connotations, is used here as a pretext for painting an abstract painting. Within the artist's oeuvre, they can be seen as the resolution of Richter's series of grey paintings.
Sternbild elegantly ties together Gerhard Richter's conceptual preoccupation with the congruence of abstract and figurative representation in his oeuvre. Though its title and appearance suggest a representation of the celestial bodies, its all-over abstract quality at the same time subverts and calls into question a straightforward reading of the painting as "representing" anything other than itself.
Clearly situating himself within this tradition, yet subverting it at the same time, Gerhard Richter's Sternbild no longer operates within a framework in which nature can be unquestionably seen as a carrier of symbolic or Divine meaning. Richter commentated on his use of nature in art:
"For me it is also a bit about recalling or probing a dream. Which always comes out very strangely, because, of course, we're not naive." (As quoted in: Ex. Cat. London, Hayward Gallery, The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, p. 462).
This sense of a loss of innocence towards visual representation, is underlined by the use of photography, rather than nature itself, as the basis of Richter's image. The painting becomes a representation of a photograph of the celestial heavens, thus removing it twice from the original subject.
"Photography, which we all use so frequently, surprised me. I was suddenly able to see it in a different way, as an image that transmitted a different look, without the conventional criteria that I used to attach to art. There was no style, no composition, no judgment. It liberated me from personal experience. There was nothing but a pure image. As a result, I wished to possess it and represent it - not to use it as a means for painting, but to use painting as a means for photography." (Interview with Rolf Schön, 1974, quoted in: Antoine, Koch & Lang, Gerhard Richter, Paris 1995, p. 57).
Using photography as a Duchampian "readymade", allowed Richter to treat the starry sky as a pure surface, as if it were an abstract image (see fig. 1). This knowing reference towards Abstract Expressionism and the maxim of the all-over surface, impenetrable to perspectival illusionism, is evidenced in the varying appearance of Richter's paintings in the Star Picture series; for the present painting is only one of two paintings in the series where the image was initially traced from an astronomy atlas. Alongside these "representational" star images, a number of paintings, some stippled to suggest stars, others just covered in swirls, coexist, suggesting Richter's understanding that the celestial sky, with its mystical connotations, is used here as a pretext for painting an abstract painting. Within the artist's oeuvre, they can be seen as the resolution of Richter's series of grey paintings.
Sternbild elegantly ties together Gerhard Richter's conceptual preoccupation with the congruence of abstract and figurative representation in his oeuvre. Though its title and appearance suggest a representation of the celestial bodies, its all-over abstract quality at the same time subverts and calls into question a straightforward reading of the painting as "representing" anything other than itself.