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Lot Essay
'In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes' (Andy Warhol)
Gerhard Richter's painting Volker Bradke is a unique work in the artist's oeuvre. It is both the culmination of Richter's long running exploration of the ambiguity of representation through blurred photographic portraits and the centrepiece for an exhibition entitled Volker Bradke in which the cult of personality and celebrity was merged with the concept of a gesamtkunstwerk or 'total work of art'.
In December 1966 for his second one-man exhibition and as part of a series of activities honouring Alfred Schmela before his gallery was temporarily closed, Richter presented the exhibition Volker Bradke at the Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf. This exhibition was part of a series of now legendary exhibitions and events undertaken throughout the month by leading artists associated with the Galerie Schmela and aimed at honouring the passing of this exhibition space. Sigmar Polke presented his Homage to Schmela on the 10th of December. On 11th December, Konrad Lueg's Coffee and Cake transformed the gallery into a temporary café and meeting place for artists and their friends. On the 15th December Joseph Beuys presented and performed the action Manresa, an action/installation thematically based on the haven where a wounded Ignatius Loyola had began his spiritual meditations. Richter presented the installation Volker Bradke on the 13th December.
The exhibition Volker Bradke was a comprehensive idolising of a young man named Volker Bradke, a largely anonymous figure who had at one time been Richter's assistant. The exhibition/installation consisted of a series of modern icons of Volker Bradke such as portrait photographs of him (both blurred and focussed), an out-of-focus film following him and others walking, a large flag sporting his portrait like a political icon and this large blurred photographic painting. All these various images of Bradke along with a large stencilled reproduction proclaiming his name were hung on partition walls that enclosed the gallery and were covered in a flowery wallpaper aimed at lending the space a banal, bourgeois and domestic atmosphere.
Richter's intention in singling out the largely anonymous and banal figure of Bradke for idolatry was both subversive and ironic. In making an idol or celebrity of Bradke, Richter, who was well aware of Warhol's work and had indeed in 1963, in collaboration with Polke, declared their 'Capitalist Realist' art to be a German version of Pop, was mimicking Warhol's work with celebrity figures such as Elvis and Marilyn. In contrast to Warhol though, in turning a nonentity like Bradke into a fetishized object of celebrity, Richter was to some extent mocking the whole process of singling out one thing, one person, one way, one faith, belief or ideology as better or more worthy of notice than any other. 'I used the so-called banal to show that the banal is the important and the human' Richter has said of his art at this time, 'The people whose images we see in the newspapers are not banal, they are only banal because they are not famous.' (Dorothea Dietrich, 'Gerhard Richter, an Interview', The Print Collectors newsletter. No. 16, Sept-Oct. 1985, p. 129.) The concept of Volker Bradke was a visible way of demonstrating this and at the same time exposing the myths that grow around the fetishizing of celebrity. In political terms, it was the placing of Bradke's image on a white flag hung both inside and outside the gallery that best showed this, instantly reminding anyone who saw it of the same cult of the personality that accompanied such tyrannical 20th C. figures as Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. In 1966 when radical student protest amongst Richter's generation was dramatically rising in response to the seemingly increasingly Imperialist tendencies of the United States both at home in West Germany and abroad in places like Vietnam, the instant and easy appeal of ideological figureheads such as Chairman Mao or Che Guevara was widespread. As an artist from Dresden who had grown up under both the Third Reich and Stalinist Communism before crossing to the West, Richter was more qualified than most his peers at both detecting and demonstrating the inherent danger of all ideology. Much of the irony underlying the fetishizing of Volker Bradke serves this purpose and reasserts Richter's refusal to engage with politics.
A degree of political irony and ambiguity also underlies the image of Bradke that Richter used as the source for the painting. Depicting the figure of Bradke marching forwards amongst a crowd surrounded by a policeman and other onlookers with banners flying in the background, the painting appears to show the almost messianic figure of Bradke leading a political march. It is the sort of image that could be taken up by the newspapers and the media as a leading image in their mythologising profile of Bradke as the new man of the moment, spokesman for his generation and force for change. It is the sort of picture with an agenda that, even though he often worked from images in the print media, Richter would not normally have selected to paint from for these very reasons. Richter prefers to work from very ordinary and seemingly banal-looking images. The banality of this image, a 'banality of evil' perhaps, lies in the fact that Bradke was, of course, no political youth leader and figure of hope. This is no press photograph. It does not derive from the newspapers nor even from a political rally. It was taken by Richter himself at an arts festival that he and Bradke visited. There is nothing notable, heroic or political about the image. It is in all respects, unremarkable, ordinary and even banal, but Richter has used it as an example of the many lies of representation. In the context in which he presented it - as an iconic image of the man of the hour, Volker Bradke, art celebrity and star of Richter's exhibition - it appears to catalogue an important story. Its focus on a single individual conveys a, wholly artificial, sense that the subject of the painting is a man of historical importance and perhaps even destiny.
In his blurred photographic paintings Richter uses the ambiguous gap that exists between painted imagery and photographic imagery (both clear and blurred) to expose and explore the limits of both mediums' dubious claims on being 'true' representations of 'reality'. Volker Bradke goes further than these earlier photo-paintings by also undermining and exposing the way in which images can be and are manipulated to fabricate any kind of 'truth' or story one wishes. Openly demonstrating the artifice of celebrity myth-making, Richter's work, like Warhol's exposes the artificiality of imagery. Unlike Warhol, a good catholic boy who turned his subjects into saintly icons using the twin techniques of the close-up and the endless repetition of a mass-consumerist economy, Richter's paintings quietly do the opposite. If Warhol sought to laud the allure of celebrity when he famously declared that in the future 'everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes', Richter sought to expose the mechanics of such fame as a sham and a lie. In Volker Bradke, he is once again reiterating the inherent danger of all ideology, all myth-making and all idealising. It is for this reason that the theme of Bradke as some kind of political hero/icon runs through both the exhibition and the oil painting.
The painting Volker Bradke is the last black and white photo-painting Richter painted before temporarily changing direction to paint his first series of Colour Charts. Following on from paintings such as Helga Matura and Acht Lernschwestern (Eight Student Nurses) in which Richter, using images from the newspapers, had presented a series of banal portraits of seemingly ordinary women who are, in fact, all murder victims, Richter reversed this process in his painting Volker Bradke. Instead of investigating the mysterious aura that comes to surround and infect such a dull and banal image when it becomes known that the seemingly ordinary person depicted was in fact the victim of something extraordinary and horrific, everything about Volker Bradke, both the painting and the exhibition, investigates the opposite. Showing the singular aura and focus normally accorded only to celebrity, Volker Bradke explores the dissipation of this aura when applied to a simple ordinary and anonymous figure. Turning the notion that 'in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes' into a temporary reality, Volker Bradke is an extraordinary work that displays the shallow artifice of fame and celebrity in exactly the same way as it exposes the artifice of all image-making.
Gerhard Richter's painting Volker Bradke is a unique work in the artist's oeuvre. It is both the culmination of Richter's long running exploration of the ambiguity of representation through blurred photographic portraits and the centrepiece for an exhibition entitled Volker Bradke in which the cult of personality and celebrity was merged with the concept of a gesamtkunstwerk or 'total work of art'.
In December 1966 for his second one-man exhibition and as part of a series of activities honouring Alfred Schmela before his gallery was temporarily closed, Richter presented the exhibition Volker Bradke at the Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf. This exhibition was part of a series of now legendary exhibitions and events undertaken throughout the month by leading artists associated with the Galerie Schmela and aimed at honouring the passing of this exhibition space. Sigmar Polke presented his Homage to Schmela on the 10th of December. On 11th December, Konrad Lueg's Coffee and Cake transformed the gallery into a temporary café and meeting place for artists and their friends. On the 15th December Joseph Beuys presented and performed the action Manresa, an action/installation thematically based on the haven where a wounded Ignatius Loyola had began his spiritual meditations. Richter presented the installation Volker Bradke on the 13th December.
The exhibition Volker Bradke was a comprehensive idolising of a young man named Volker Bradke, a largely anonymous figure who had at one time been Richter's assistant. The exhibition/installation consisted of a series of modern icons of Volker Bradke such as portrait photographs of him (both blurred and focussed), an out-of-focus film following him and others walking, a large flag sporting his portrait like a political icon and this large blurred photographic painting. All these various images of Bradke along with a large stencilled reproduction proclaiming his name were hung on partition walls that enclosed the gallery and were covered in a flowery wallpaper aimed at lending the space a banal, bourgeois and domestic atmosphere.
Richter's intention in singling out the largely anonymous and banal figure of Bradke for idolatry was both subversive and ironic. In making an idol or celebrity of Bradke, Richter, who was well aware of Warhol's work and had indeed in 1963, in collaboration with Polke, declared their 'Capitalist Realist' art to be a German version of Pop, was mimicking Warhol's work with celebrity figures such as Elvis and Marilyn. In contrast to Warhol though, in turning a nonentity like Bradke into a fetishized object of celebrity, Richter was to some extent mocking the whole process of singling out one thing, one person, one way, one faith, belief or ideology as better or more worthy of notice than any other. 'I used the so-called banal to show that the banal is the important and the human' Richter has said of his art at this time, 'The people whose images we see in the newspapers are not banal, they are only banal because they are not famous.' (Dorothea Dietrich, 'Gerhard Richter, an Interview', The Print Collectors newsletter. No. 16, Sept-Oct. 1985, p. 129.) The concept of Volker Bradke was a visible way of demonstrating this and at the same time exposing the myths that grow around the fetishizing of celebrity. In political terms, it was the placing of Bradke's image on a white flag hung both inside and outside the gallery that best showed this, instantly reminding anyone who saw it of the same cult of the personality that accompanied such tyrannical 20th C. figures as Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. In 1966 when radical student protest amongst Richter's generation was dramatically rising in response to the seemingly increasingly Imperialist tendencies of the United States both at home in West Germany and abroad in places like Vietnam, the instant and easy appeal of ideological figureheads such as Chairman Mao or Che Guevara was widespread. As an artist from Dresden who had grown up under both the Third Reich and Stalinist Communism before crossing to the West, Richter was more qualified than most his peers at both detecting and demonstrating the inherent danger of all ideology. Much of the irony underlying the fetishizing of Volker Bradke serves this purpose and reasserts Richter's refusal to engage with politics.
A degree of political irony and ambiguity also underlies the image of Bradke that Richter used as the source for the painting. Depicting the figure of Bradke marching forwards amongst a crowd surrounded by a policeman and other onlookers with banners flying in the background, the painting appears to show the almost messianic figure of Bradke leading a political march. It is the sort of image that could be taken up by the newspapers and the media as a leading image in their mythologising profile of Bradke as the new man of the moment, spokesman for his generation and force for change. It is the sort of picture with an agenda that, even though he often worked from images in the print media, Richter would not normally have selected to paint from for these very reasons. Richter prefers to work from very ordinary and seemingly banal-looking images. The banality of this image, a 'banality of evil' perhaps, lies in the fact that Bradke was, of course, no political youth leader and figure of hope. This is no press photograph. It does not derive from the newspapers nor even from a political rally. It was taken by Richter himself at an arts festival that he and Bradke visited. There is nothing notable, heroic or political about the image. It is in all respects, unremarkable, ordinary and even banal, but Richter has used it as an example of the many lies of representation. In the context in which he presented it - as an iconic image of the man of the hour, Volker Bradke, art celebrity and star of Richter's exhibition - it appears to catalogue an important story. Its focus on a single individual conveys a, wholly artificial, sense that the subject of the painting is a man of historical importance and perhaps even destiny.
In his blurred photographic paintings Richter uses the ambiguous gap that exists between painted imagery and photographic imagery (both clear and blurred) to expose and explore the limits of both mediums' dubious claims on being 'true' representations of 'reality'. Volker Bradke goes further than these earlier photo-paintings by also undermining and exposing the way in which images can be and are manipulated to fabricate any kind of 'truth' or story one wishes. Openly demonstrating the artifice of celebrity myth-making, Richter's work, like Warhol's exposes the artificiality of imagery. Unlike Warhol, a good catholic boy who turned his subjects into saintly icons using the twin techniques of the close-up and the endless repetition of a mass-consumerist economy, Richter's paintings quietly do the opposite. If Warhol sought to laud the allure of celebrity when he famously declared that in the future 'everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes', Richter sought to expose the mechanics of such fame as a sham and a lie. In Volker Bradke, he is once again reiterating the inherent danger of all ideology, all myth-making and all idealising. It is for this reason that the theme of Bradke as some kind of political hero/icon runs through both the exhibition and the oil painting.
The painting Volker Bradke is the last black and white photo-painting Richter painted before temporarily changing direction to paint his first series of Colour Charts. Following on from paintings such as Helga Matura and Acht Lernschwestern (Eight Student Nurses) in which Richter, using images from the newspapers, had presented a series of banal portraits of seemingly ordinary women who are, in fact, all murder victims, Richter reversed this process in his painting Volker Bradke. Instead of investigating the mysterious aura that comes to surround and infect such a dull and banal image when it becomes known that the seemingly ordinary person depicted was in fact the victim of something extraordinary and horrific, everything about Volker Bradke, both the painting and the exhibition, investigates the opposite. Showing the singular aura and focus normally accorded only to celebrity, Volker Bradke explores the dissipation of this aura when applied to a simple ordinary and anonymous figure. Turning the notion that 'in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes' into a temporary reality, Volker Bradke is an extraordinary work that displays the shallow artifice of fame and celebrity in exactly the same way as it exposes the artifice of all image-making.