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Lot Essay
‘It is hard to think of [Richter] as anything other than one of the great colourists of late twentieth-century painting’ (Robert Storr)
With its blazing red surface and cinematic sense of depth, the present work is an incandescent example of Gerhard Richter’s celebrated Abstrakte Bilder (‘Abstract Paintings’). Painted in 1991, during a period of outstanding professional triumph, it belongs to an extraordinary suite of distinctive red canvases created that year. With examples held in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart, these works take their place at the height of his abstract practice: a further example was illustrated on the cover of the catalogue for his retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London, that year. In the present work, tones of crimson, scarlet and vermilion shimmer and collide, marbled with silken swathes of shadow. The squeegee, Richter’s signature tool since the 1980s, is used to subtle yet dramatic effect, delicately parting the skeins of red to reveal flashes of light beneath. It is an exquisite meditation on the relationship between chance and control, illusion and reality, revelling in the fiery friction between them.
The Abstrakte Bilder dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s are widely considered to represent Richter’s finest achievements. Begun in the 1970s, and honed over the course of the following decade, these paintings took on a life of their own during this period, increasing in complexity, scale and ambition. Major series arose, including Eis (Ice) (1989, Art Institute of Chicago), Wald (Forest) (1990) and the celebrated Bach suite (1992, Moderna Museet, Stockholm). The latter, in particular—with their glimmering ruby curtains—may be seen to have their origins in the red paintings of 1991. Concurrently, Richter’s international reputation began to soar. The Tate retrospective was followed by a major presentation at Documenta IX in 1992, while 1993 saw the opening of his career-defining touring retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This landmark survey of more than 100 paintings, accompanied by a new catalogue raisonné, propelled the artist to global stardom.
Many of the red abstracts, including the present, were unveiled at Galerie Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert in September 1991. It was one of the first times in Richter’s abstract practice that he had focused with such sustained intensity upon a single colour. His choice was not without art-historical precedent: Robert Rauschenberg and Ad Reinhardt had both dedicated specific series to red, while artists from Kazimir Malevich and Henri Matisse to Barnett Newman and Cy Twombly had rigorously plumbed its depths. For Richter, too, red was a potent hue, saturating major photo-paintings such as Betty (1988, Saint Louis Art Museum) and later the exquisite Lesende (Reader) (1994, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). At the time of the present work he had also just completed a series of coloured mirror paintings, including eight ‘blood red’ examples—one of which resides in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Since the late 1960s, when he moved away from his early greyscale photo-paintings, Richter has repeatedly sought to dissect the chromatic spectrum. His Farbtafeln (Colour Charts) drew upon commercial colour samples in the spirit of Pop Art; his Rot-Blau-Gelb (Red-Blue-Yellow) paintings had mixed three tones in endless configurations. Many of his major series of the 1990s would also explore deliberately limited palettes, including the four Grün-Blau abstracts of 1993 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), and the five Rot-Blau-Grün paintings of 1994 (Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin). While the red paintings may be understood within this context, however, they are far from monochrome statements. In Richter’s hands, red fractures into a spectrum of infinite shades: from cherry and rose to brick, burgundy and carmine. In the present work, as in many others from the series, other colours glimmer through the surface like jewels. Red becomes a cloak, veiling tantalising hints of a world beyond.
Richter’s abstracts emerged and evolved in dialogue with his photorealist paintings. Together these twin bodies of work asked important questions about the nature of art-making, suggesting that all images were inherently deceptive. Richter’s photo-paintings frequently blurred their subjects to the point of ambiguity, reproducing the slippages of the camera lens. His abstracts, conversely, revelled in their unplanned semblance to reality, their surfaces swimming with hints of recognisable phenomena. The present work quivers with the same ethereal beauty as light upon water, or a dazzling sunrise. The closer we get to the surface, however, the more its illusion dissolves. ‘With abstract painting we create a better means of approaching what can be neither seen nor understood’, explained Richter (G. Richter, quoted in R. Nasgaard, ‘Gerhard Richter’, in Gerhard Richter: Paintings, exh. cat. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1988, p. 107).
The squeegee, adopted in the early 1980s, became an essential part of this approach. It allowed Richter to move away from his early ‘soft’ abstracts—often based on photographs of enlarged brushstrokes—and to submit himself to the powers of chance. Dragged over layers of wet paint, it became a tool for mixing and excavating, marbling different tonalities together while simultaneously exposing others. The effects recall the vast, shimmering colour fields of Mark Rothko, the dappled surfaces of the Impressionists and the rich chiaroscuro of Velázquez and Caravaggio. None, however, were explicit models for Richter: in works such as the present, paint itself remains the sole subject. The squeegee, he writes, ‘is a good technique for switching off thinking. Consciously, I can’t calculate the result. But subconsciously, I can sense it’ (G. Richter, quoted in S. Koldehoff, ‘Gerhard Richter, Die Macht der Malerei’, in Art. Das Kunstmagazin, December 1999, p. 20). Across the surface of the present work, pigment writes its own story, drifting in and out of resemblance to the world we know.
With its blazing red surface and cinematic sense of depth, the present work is an incandescent example of Gerhard Richter’s celebrated Abstrakte Bilder (‘Abstract Paintings’). Painted in 1991, during a period of outstanding professional triumph, it belongs to an extraordinary suite of distinctive red canvases created that year. With examples held in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart, these works take their place at the height of his abstract practice: a further example was illustrated on the cover of the catalogue for his retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London, that year. In the present work, tones of crimson, scarlet and vermilion shimmer and collide, marbled with silken swathes of shadow. The squeegee, Richter’s signature tool since the 1980s, is used to subtle yet dramatic effect, delicately parting the skeins of red to reveal flashes of light beneath. It is an exquisite meditation on the relationship between chance and control, illusion and reality, revelling in the fiery friction between them.
The Abstrakte Bilder dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s are widely considered to represent Richter’s finest achievements. Begun in the 1970s, and honed over the course of the following decade, these paintings took on a life of their own during this period, increasing in complexity, scale and ambition. Major series arose, including Eis (Ice) (1989, Art Institute of Chicago), Wald (Forest) (1990) and the celebrated Bach suite (1992, Moderna Museet, Stockholm). The latter, in particular—with their glimmering ruby curtains—may be seen to have their origins in the red paintings of 1991. Concurrently, Richter’s international reputation began to soar. The Tate retrospective was followed by a major presentation at Documenta IX in 1992, while 1993 saw the opening of his career-defining touring retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This landmark survey of more than 100 paintings, accompanied by a new catalogue raisonné, propelled the artist to global stardom.
Many of the red abstracts, including the present, were unveiled at Galerie Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert in September 1991. It was one of the first times in Richter’s abstract practice that he had focused with such sustained intensity upon a single colour. His choice was not without art-historical precedent: Robert Rauschenberg and Ad Reinhardt had both dedicated specific series to red, while artists from Kazimir Malevich and Henri Matisse to Barnett Newman and Cy Twombly had rigorously plumbed its depths. For Richter, too, red was a potent hue, saturating major photo-paintings such as Betty (1988, Saint Louis Art Museum) and later the exquisite Lesende (Reader) (1994, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). At the time of the present work he had also just completed a series of coloured mirror paintings, including eight ‘blood red’ examples—one of which resides in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Since the late 1960s, when he moved away from his early greyscale photo-paintings, Richter has repeatedly sought to dissect the chromatic spectrum. His Farbtafeln (Colour Charts) drew upon commercial colour samples in the spirit of Pop Art; his Rot-Blau-Gelb (Red-Blue-Yellow) paintings had mixed three tones in endless configurations. Many of his major series of the 1990s would also explore deliberately limited palettes, including the four Grün-Blau abstracts of 1993 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), and the five Rot-Blau-Grün paintings of 1994 (Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin). While the red paintings may be understood within this context, however, they are far from monochrome statements. In Richter’s hands, red fractures into a spectrum of infinite shades: from cherry and rose to brick, burgundy and carmine. In the present work, as in many others from the series, other colours glimmer through the surface like jewels. Red becomes a cloak, veiling tantalising hints of a world beyond.
Richter’s abstracts emerged and evolved in dialogue with his photorealist paintings. Together these twin bodies of work asked important questions about the nature of art-making, suggesting that all images were inherently deceptive. Richter’s photo-paintings frequently blurred their subjects to the point of ambiguity, reproducing the slippages of the camera lens. His abstracts, conversely, revelled in their unplanned semblance to reality, their surfaces swimming with hints of recognisable phenomena. The present work quivers with the same ethereal beauty as light upon water, or a dazzling sunrise. The closer we get to the surface, however, the more its illusion dissolves. ‘With abstract painting we create a better means of approaching what can be neither seen nor understood’, explained Richter (G. Richter, quoted in R. Nasgaard, ‘Gerhard Richter’, in Gerhard Richter: Paintings, exh. cat. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1988, p. 107).
The squeegee, adopted in the early 1980s, became an essential part of this approach. It allowed Richter to move away from his early ‘soft’ abstracts—often based on photographs of enlarged brushstrokes—and to submit himself to the powers of chance. Dragged over layers of wet paint, it became a tool for mixing and excavating, marbling different tonalities together while simultaneously exposing others. The effects recall the vast, shimmering colour fields of Mark Rothko, the dappled surfaces of the Impressionists and the rich chiaroscuro of Velázquez and Caravaggio. None, however, were explicit models for Richter: in works such as the present, paint itself remains the sole subject. The squeegee, he writes, ‘is a good technique for switching off thinking. Consciously, I can’t calculate the result. But subconsciously, I can sense it’ (G. Richter, quoted in S. Koldehoff, ‘Gerhard Richter, Die Macht der Malerei’, in Art. Das Kunstmagazin, December 1999, p. 20). Across the surface of the present work, pigment writes its own story, drifting in and out of resemblance to the world we know.