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拍品專文
In 1983 Gerhard Richter made a haunting series of paintings depicting human skulls. Along with the flickering candles that first appeared in his work the previous year, these paintings draw on the tradition of the vanitas still-life or memento mori. By the 1980s, Richter had already established a major reputation based on his mastery of a broad, almost encyclopedic range of subjects and techniques. During the twenty years preceding the Skull series, Richter extensively explored painting's relationship to photographic conventions drawing primarily on snapshots and press photos. In an equally ambitious project, he also addressed the nature of abstraction, or "pure" painting, from gestural expression through cool monochrome. In Richter's self-reflexive oeuvre, the means of representation itself becomes an important subject.
Skull continues these investigations combining borrowed imagery with beautiful handling. It looks to the familiar still life genre of the Northern tradition, as exemplified by Pieter Claesz's seventeenth century vanitas painting (fig. 1). Claesz skull and candle remind us that time is fleeting and death always imminent, that one day we too will be extinguished, sharing the fate of the anonymous man whose fate we contemplate. Richter's attraction to this centuries-old form is not surprising. Death has been a consistent theme throughout his career, most famously in Eight Student Nurses, 1966 and the classic painting cycle 18 Oktober 1977, 1988 depicting the mysterious deaths of the Baader-Meinhof terrorists.
In Skull, the artist represents death as a more generalized concept. Richter abstracts the setting: infused with a cool, glowing light, it remains nonetheless hauntingly empty. His palette is sparse, relying primarily on grays--another Richter signature. The emphasis on light/dark value contrast, together with the image's slightly unfocused quality, references photography as well as painting. Skull suggests a gripping paradox: the vanitas genre and photography both imply immediacy, while art itself endures, even transcends time--like the books in the Claesz still-life, painting promises immortality for its creator. Richter creates a powerful tension between the present moment and its passing. His characteristic blurring of the image renders our distance from it palpable, effacing the specifics of even the most powerful events and images. Richter's refined, even removed handling paradoxically evokes strong feelings of loss. Skull is a complex, elegiac painting, a meditation on remembering, forgetting, and the relentless passage of time.
Skull continues these investigations combining borrowed imagery with beautiful handling. It looks to the familiar still life genre of the Northern tradition, as exemplified by Pieter Claesz's seventeenth century vanitas painting (fig. 1). Claesz skull and candle remind us that time is fleeting and death always imminent, that one day we too will be extinguished, sharing the fate of the anonymous man whose fate we contemplate. Richter's attraction to this centuries-old form is not surprising. Death has been a consistent theme throughout his career, most famously in Eight Student Nurses, 1966 and the classic painting cycle 18 Oktober 1977, 1988 depicting the mysterious deaths of the Baader-Meinhof terrorists.
In Skull, the artist represents death as a more generalized concept. Richter abstracts the setting: infused with a cool, glowing light, it remains nonetheless hauntingly empty. His palette is sparse, relying primarily on grays--another Richter signature. The emphasis on light/dark value contrast, together with the image's slightly unfocused quality, references photography as well as painting. Skull suggests a gripping paradox: the vanitas genre and photography both imply immediacy, while art itself endures, even transcends time--like the books in the Claesz still-life, painting promises immortality for its creator. Richter creates a powerful tension between the present moment and its passing. His characteristic blurring of the image renders our distance from it palpable, effacing the specifics of even the most powerful events and images. Richter's refined, even removed handling paradoxically evokes strong feelings of loss. Skull is a complex, elegiac painting, a meditation on remembering, forgetting, and the relentless passage of time.