拍品專文
What Gerhard Richter achieves in his large Abstract paintings of the 1980s has been described as a "pictorial quality that the intellect cannot fabricate." (Terry Neff, Gerhard Richter Paintings, London 1988, p. 108). The extraordinary and often ambiguous correlation between the many multi-layered forms and sweeps of colour that the artist achieves in these works, can only, Richter believes, be arrived at through a strict process of defining and re-defining, of building and removing, of painting and over-painting the work until it has achieved a synthesis that is somehow removed from the artist himself.
Often working on several canvases at once, Richter has described his working process as being "like a chessplayer playing on several boards". (op.cit.., p. 107). Richter begins each new work with a series of set moves, applying a soft ground of colour in the illusionistic manner of his earlier Smooth Abstract Paintings. This is then gradually altered with ever increasing layers of paint applied with a squeegee or a large brush and built up in a series of ever more intuitive moves that respond to the increasing demands of what is happening on the canvas. It is important, Richter maintains, to pause and reflect on each move as each new mark creates a resonance and interaction not merely within its own picture but often in connection with the others around it. The painting is only finished when "there is no more I can do to them, when they exceed me, or they have something that I can no longer keep up with." (ibid., p. 107).
Suspicious of what he calls, "the image of reality which our senses convey to us and which is incomplete and limited", (Ex. Cat., Venice, Gerhard Richter: 36 Biennale di Venezia, Gerhard Richter interview with Rolf Schoen, 1972, p. 24). Richter seeks to "make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate." (Ibid).
"In abstract painting", he has written, "we have found a better way of gaining access to the unvisualizable, the incomprehensible; because abstract painting deploys the utmost visual immediacy - all the resources of art in fact - in order to depict "nothing". Accustomed to pictures in which we recognise something real, we rightly refuse to regard mere colour (however multifarous) as the thing visualised. Instead we accept that we are seeing the unvisualisable; that which has never been seen before and is not visible... . So, in dealing with this inexplicable reality, the lovelier, cleverer, madder, extremer, more visual, and more incomprehensible the analogy, the better the picture. Art is the highest form of hope." (Ex. Cat., Kassel, Documenta 1982, p. 100).
This painting, No. 610-1, is one of a group of four that are all somewhat forest-like in their appearance. Although not made explicit, the scratch-marks, smears and brushstrokes of this work in particular are highly reminiscent of tree branches, whilst the cascade of crashing colours gives the sensation of dense foliage. As Richter has said that when he is painting the abstract works, "it is untrue that I have nothing specific in mind", it would seem likely that he had some kind of landscape in mind when he was painting the 610 pictures. But whatever the case, to try to tie the work to any one specific reference of meaning would be to miss the main point of these works for they are as Roald Nasgaard has written, "complex visual events, suspended in interrogation, and "fictive models" for that reality which escapes direct address, eludes description and conceptualisation, but resides unarticulate in our experience." (Terry Neff, ibid.,, London 1988, p. 108).
Often working on several canvases at once, Richter has described his working process as being "like a chessplayer playing on several boards". (op.cit.., p. 107). Richter begins each new work with a series of set moves, applying a soft ground of colour in the illusionistic manner of his earlier Smooth Abstract Paintings. This is then gradually altered with ever increasing layers of paint applied with a squeegee or a large brush and built up in a series of ever more intuitive moves that respond to the increasing demands of what is happening on the canvas. It is important, Richter maintains, to pause and reflect on each move as each new mark creates a resonance and interaction not merely within its own picture but often in connection with the others around it. The painting is only finished when "there is no more I can do to them, when they exceed me, or they have something that I can no longer keep up with." (ibid., p. 107).
Suspicious of what he calls, "the image of reality which our senses convey to us and which is incomplete and limited", (Ex. Cat., Venice, Gerhard Richter: 36 Biennale di Venezia, Gerhard Richter interview with Rolf Schoen, 1972, p. 24). Richter seeks to "make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate." (Ibid).
"In abstract painting", he has written, "we have found a better way of gaining access to the unvisualizable, the incomprehensible; because abstract painting deploys the utmost visual immediacy - all the resources of art in fact - in order to depict "nothing". Accustomed to pictures in which we recognise something real, we rightly refuse to regard mere colour (however multifarous) as the thing visualised. Instead we accept that we are seeing the unvisualisable; that which has never been seen before and is not visible... . So, in dealing with this inexplicable reality, the lovelier, cleverer, madder, extremer, more visual, and more incomprehensible the analogy, the better the picture. Art is the highest form of hope." (Ex. Cat., Kassel, Documenta 1982, p. 100).
This painting, No. 610-1, is one of a group of four that are all somewhat forest-like in their appearance. Although not made explicit, the scratch-marks, smears and brushstrokes of this work in particular are highly reminiscent of tree branches, whilst the cascade of crashing colours gives the sensation of dense foliage. As Richter has said that when he is painting the abstract works, "it is untrue that I have nothing specific in mind", it would seem likely that he had some kind of landscape in mind when he was painting the 610 pictures. But whatever the case, to try to tie the work to any one specific reference of meaning would be to miss the main point of these works for they are as Roald Nasgaard has written, "complex visual events, suspended in interrogation, and "fictive models" for that reality which escapes direct address, eludes description and conceptualisation, but resides unarticulate in our experience." (Terry Neff, ibid.,, London 1988, p. 108).