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拍品专文
10. Dez. 99 [Firenze] is an exemplar from one of Gerhard Richter’s most critical bodies of work—the Overpainted Photographs—bringing together all aspects of his celebrated career into one work. As the curator and close collaborator to the artist Hans Ulbrich Obrist writes, “the Overpainted Photographs seem to me to be one of the most important facets of Richter’s oeuvre” (“Introduction: Starting Point and Working Methods,” in J. Hage and H. U. Obrist, eds., Gerhard Richter: The Overpainted Photographs, A Comprehensive Catalogue, Volume 1, Essays, London, 2025, p. 6). 10. Dez. 99 [Firenze] bears even more import than most Overpainted Photographs, as he employed a subtly different method here. While his ordinary Overpainted Photographs were made at the end of his working day, using the paint accumulated on his squeegees from his large-format Abstrake Bilder to run over postcard-format photographs in a rapid process, here Richter employs the same painterly method which he refined with his abstract paintings, blurring, scraping, and otherwise reworking the pigment once applied to the photograph. The artist was similarly much more selective with the Firenze series than he was with the other Overpainted Photographs: Obrist reports that Richter destroyed approximately half of his Firenze series, when he was unhappy with the final composition, compared to an ordinary discard rate of around twenty percent.
In 1999, the year the present work was made, Richter explained why he had begun turning photographs into paintings: “Painting is traditional but for me that doesn’t mean the academy. I felt a need to paint; I love painting. It was something natural—as listening to music or playing an instrument for some people. For this reason I searched for themes of my era and generation. Photography offered this, so I chose it as a medium for painting” (quoted in “Conversation with Paolo Vagheggi, 1999,” in D. Elger and H. U. Obrist, eds., Gerhard Richter: Writings 1961-2007, New York, 2009, p. 347).
The effect of Richter’s blurring the boundaries of photography and painting here is profound. As Uwe M. Schneede describes, “this produced some strangely compelling pictorial solutions” (“Reality, the Photograph, the Paint, and the Picture,” in J. Hage and H. U. Obrist, eds.,op. cit., p. 50). 10. Dez. 99 [Firenze] fascinates in its merging of Richter’s long-held fascination with photographic processes with his dedication to painting. By blurring the barriers between the two media, Richter continues the artistic project he began as a young artist, making photorealistic paintings. Through this poignant work, Richter collapses the distinction between image and intervention, reaffirming the Overpainted Photographs, and the Firenze series in particular as a decisive arena in which his lifelong interrogation of representation, medium, and authorship finds one of its most concentrated and resonant expressions.
In 1999, the year the present work was made, Richter explained why he had begun turning photographs into paintings: “Painting is traditional but for me that doesn’t mean the academy. I felt a need to paint; I love painting. It was something natural—as listening to music or playing an instrument for some people. For this reason I searched for themes of my era and generation. Photography offered this, so I chose it as a medium for painting” (quoted in “Conversation with Paolo Vagheggi, 1999,” in D. Elger and H. U. Obrist, eds., Gerhard Richter: Writings 1961-2007, New York, 2009, p. 347).
The effect of Richter’s blurring the boundaries of photography and painting here is profound. As Uwe M. Schneede describes, “this produced some strangely compelling pictorial solutions” (“Reality, the Photograph, the Paint, and the Picture,” in J. Hage and H. U. Obrist, eds.,op. cit., p. 50). 10. Dez. 99 [Firenze] fascinates in its merging of Richter’s long-held fascination with photographic processes with his dedication to painting. By blurring the barriers between the two media, Richter continues the artistic project he began as a young artist, making photorealistic paintings. Through this poignant work, Richter collapses the distinction between image and intervention, reaffirming the Overpainted Photographs, and the Firenze series in particular as a decisive arena in which his lifelong interrogation of representation, medium, and authorship finds one of its most concentrated and resonant expressions.