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Lot Essay
A sublime example of Gerhard Richter’s famed abstract paintings, Abstraktes Bild stands at the culmination of almost three decades of painterly exploration. In this large-scale work, expansive sweeps of ethereal pigment envelop a panoramic canvas; an initial consideration announces an almost monochromatic veil of white, but further attention discloses a subtle palette of soft greens, red, blues, pinks, and mauves that emerge through the diaphanous upper layer of paint to make themselves visible. The artist began his interrogations of the painted surface in the 1960s with his “blurred” photo paintings, a revolutionary series of works which evolved into his Abstraktes Bilder, the now iconic series of paintings which have come to dominate the latter part of his career. These majestic works are celebrated as some of the most visceral and cerebral examinations of what it means to be a painter working today and are now sought after by both major collectors and institutions alike.
The outward simplicity of a painting such as Abstraktes Bild belies the time taken in, and complexity of, its realization. As the artist himself explains, “A picture like this is painted in different layers, separated by intervals of time. The first layer mostly represents the background, which has a photographic, illusionistic look to it, though done without using photograph. This first, smooth soft-edged paint surface is like a finished picture; but, after a while, I decide that I understand it or have seen enough of it, and in the next stage of painting, I partly destroy it, partly add to it, and so it goes on at intervals, ‘til there is nothing more to do and the picture is finished” (quoted in U. Wilmes, “Gerhard Richter: One Moment in Time. On the Documentation of the Conditions in which Abstract Paintings are Made,” in U. Wilmes, Gerhard Richter: Large Abstracts, exh. cat., Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2008, p. 138).
The result is a considered study of how paint is applied to the surface of a canvas and the resulting effects that can be achieved. In this manner it has parallels to Claude Monet’s famed Water Lilies and his meteorological studies of the French countryside, particularly the haystacks that dotted the landscape. Between 1890 and 1891, he completed almost thirty such paintings in which he made a conscious effects to record the effects of ever shifting light on his subject matter. “I’m working away at a series of different effects (of stacks),” Monet wrote to the critic Gustave Geffroy, “but at this time of year, the sun sets so quickly that I can’t keep up with it…” (quoted in J. House, Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 198). In Haystacks (Effects of Snow and Sun) (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) from 1891, the combination of the setting sun refracting off the snowy surface of the haystacks produces a subtle, yet dazzling, use of color which can also be seen in the surface of Abstraktes Bild.
Painted in a landscape format, the present work can also be considered alongside the established tradition established in the eighteenth century by artists such as the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. He was interested in capturing on canvas the feeling of nature as a place for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. He developed pictorial vistas that emphasized intimacy, open-endedness, and the complexity of an individual’s response and relationship to the natural world. The results were paintings that were meditative, mysterious, and full of wonder. For Richter, the German tradition of a strong, intimate relationship with the landscape still rings true. But belonging to a generation who came of age in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Richter’s approach was to question the response of artists to the resulting horrors; his response was to challenge the cultural hegemony and develop a completely new form of artistic language.
While aesthetically Richter’s Abstraktes Bilder may recall the work of earlier artists, philosophically and contextually, they differ. Richter has often criticized abstraction because of the “phony reverence” it inspires, declaring, in contrast, that his abstractions were “an assault on the falsity and the religiosity of the way people glorified abstraction” (G. Richter, interview with B.H.D. Buchloh, 1986; in G. Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London, 1995, p. 141). Rather than an homage to abstraction, Richter’s abstract pictures address the problems of painting and the difficulties confronting contemporary painters working under the great weight of the history of painting at a moment when many artists had abandoned the medium itself. According to Richter, his abstract works represent “my presence, my reality, my problems, my difficulties and contradictions” (quoted in D. Dietrich, “Gerhard Richter: An Interview,” in The Print Collectors Newsletter, 16, no. 4, September-October 1985, p. 128).
Thus, Richter’s Abstraktes Bild forms an important part of the artist’s belief about the fundamentals of painting. In both physical and painterly forms it represents the artist’s faith in painting as the highest form of human endeavor. Although they adhere to no known logic or ideology they are created through a carefully thought out and precise accumulation of paint and executed in a thoroughly distinctive process during which Richter deliberately avoids all conventional rules of aesthetics in order to arrive at work that belies pictorial ideology. “I can... see my abstracts as metaphors,” Richter has said; they are “pictures that are about a possibility of social coexistence. Looked at in this way, all that I am trying to do in each picture is to bring together the most disparate and mutually contradictory elements, alive and viable, in the greatest possible freedom. No Paradises” (quoted in G. Richter, op. cit., 1995, p. 166). This deliberate ambiguity is intended to demonstrate that all perception is an illusion. By seemingly providing several layers of conflicting abstract reality, Richter presents a “forest-like” mystery where the viewer quite literally can’t see the wood for the trees. Playing with the surfaces of his abstracts, Richter is in effect exploring them in the same way that he explored the ambiguity of blurring in his photographic paintings of the 1960s. As with these works, Richter is clearly still fascinated with surface and the insight it can provide into the mystery of what lies beneath.
The outward simplicity of a painting such as Abstraktes Bild belies the time taken in, and complexity of, its realization. As the artist himself explains, “A picture like this is painted in different layers, separated by intervals of time. The first layer mostly represents the background, which has a photographic, illusionistic look to it, though done without using photograph. This first, smooth soft-edged paint surface is like a finished picture; but, after a while, I decide that I understand it or have seen enough of it, and in the next stage of painting, I partly destroy it, partly add to it, and so it goes on at intervals, ‘til there is nothing more to do and the picture is finished” (quoted in U. Wilmes, “Gerhard Richter: One Moment in Time. On the Documentation of the Conditions in which Abstract Paintings are Made,” in U. Wilmes, Gerhard Richter: Large Abstracts, exh. cat., Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2008, p. 138).
The result is a considered study of how paint is applied to the surface of a canvas and the resulting effects that can be achieved. In this manner it has parallels to Claude Monet’s famed Water Lilies and his meteorological studies of the French countryside, particularly the haystacks that dotted the landscape. Between 1890 and 1891, he completed almost thirty such paintings in which he made a conscious effects to record the effects of ever shifting light on his subject matter. “I’m working away at a series of different effects (of stacks),” Monet wrote to the critic Gustave Geffroy, “but at this time of year, the sun sets so quickly that I can’t keep up with it…” (quoted in J. House, Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 198). In Haystacks (Effects of Snow and Sun) (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) from 1891, the combination of the setting sun refracting off the snowy surface of the haystacks produces a subtle, yet dazzling, use of color which can also be seen in the surface of Abstraktes Bild.
Painted in a landscape format, the present work can also be considered alongside the established tradition established in the eighteenth century by artists such as the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. He was interested in capturing on canvas the feeling of nature as a place for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. He developed pictorial vistas that emphasized intimacy, open-endedness, and the complexity of an individual’s response and relationship to the natural world. The results were paintings that were meditative, mysterious, and full of wonder. For Richter, the German tradition of a strong, intimate relationship with the landscape still rings true. But belonging to a generation who came of age in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Richter’s approach was to question the response of artists to the resulting horrors; his response was to challenge the cultural hegemony and develop a completely new form of artistic language.
While aesthetically Richter’s Abstraktes Bilder may recall the work of earlier artists, philosophically and contextually, they differ. Richter has often criticized abstraction because of the “phony reverence” it inspires, declaring, in contrast, that his abstractions were “an assault on the falsity and the religiosity of the way people glorified abstraction” (G. Richter, interview with B.H.D. Buchloh, 1986; in G. Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London, 1995, p. 141). Rather than an homage to abstraction, Richter’s abstract pictures address the problems of painting and the difficulties confronting contemporary painters working under the great weight of the history of painting at a moment when many artists had abandoned the medium itself. According to Richter, his abstract works represent “my presence, my reality, my problems, my difficulties and contradictions” (quoted in D. Dietrich, “Gerhard Richter: An Interview,” in The Print Collectors Newsletter, 16, no. 4, September-October 1985, p. 128).
Thus, Richter’s Abstraktes Bild forms an important part of the artist’s belief about the fundamentals of painting. In both physical and painterly forms it represents the artist’s faith in painting as the highest form of human endeavor. Although they adhere to no known logic or ideology they are created through a carefully thought out and precise accumulation of paint and executed in a thoroughly distinctive process during which Richter deliberately avoids all conventional rules of aesthetics in order to arrive at work that belies pictorial ideology. “I can... see my abstracts as metaphors,” Richter has said; they are “pictures that are about a possibility of social coexistence. Looked at in this way, all that I am trying to do in each picture is to bring together the most disparate and mutually contradictory elements, alive and viable, in the greatest possible freedom. No Paradises” (quoted in G. Richter, op. cit., 1995, p. 166). This deliberate ambiguity is intended to demonstrate that all perception is an illusion. By seemingly providing several layers of conflicting abstract reality, Richter presents a “forest-like” mystery where the viewer quite literally can’t see the wood for the trees. Playing with the surfaces of his abstracts, Richter is in effect exploring them in the same way that he explored the ambiguity of blurring in his photographic paintings of the 1960s. As with these works, Richter is clearly still fascinated with surface and the insight it can provide into the mystery of what lies beneath.