.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild of 2008 is a profound reflection on the passage of time. The painting’s seeming spontaneity, evoked by the vibrant fluorescence of the top green layer, belies the incredible amount of time and energy which the German artist wrought upon the work. Just one year after painting the present work, Richter declared that “a painting can help us think something that goes beyond this senseless existence. That’s something art can do” (quoted in A. Borchardt-Hume, “‘Dreh Dich Nicht Im’: Don’t turn around; Richter’s Paintings of the Late 1980s,” in Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 169). Abstraktes Bild is a mature reflection on time and existence, revealing Richter at his most contemplative and reflective.
Across a period years, Richter continually engaged this canvas, adding and subtracting pigment from the work’s surface as he simultaneously pushed and pulled paint across the surface of the tableau. The present work exemplifies this extended process, each visible layer revealing an alternative ending or possible solution to the work. In-progress photographs reveal the gradual evolution of the work. The first state is a photorealistic painting of a misty alpine scene, inspired by Richter’s alpine retreat in Sils, Switzerland. Richter then employed his signature blur to the composition, abstracting the imagery into a hazy white tableau reminiscent of his pure white paintings. The final state exhibits radical alterations, demonstrating the artist’s constant strive towards new artistic heights, challenging his own artistic orthodoxy.
Richter slowly refined his meticulous process for making the Abstraktes Bilder over his decades-long career. As he noted, “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, illusionist look to it, though done without using a photograph. This first, smooth, soft-edged surface is like a finished picture… I partly destroy, partly add to it… at that stage the whole thing looks very spontaneous, but in between there are long intervals of time. It is a highly planned kind of spontaneity” (quoted in C. Moeineau, “The Blow-Up, Primary Colours and Duplications,” in op. cit., p. 131). From the mid-1980s, Richter began to engage his now-iconic squeegee technique on his abstract works, and from the early 1990s the spatula. These two implements engage in the systematic eradication of the artist’s hand, creating an abstract painting devoid of gestural or expressionist remnants. “What we are given instead is a temporal depth: the summation of several units of moments,” writes the art historian Camille Moeineau (ibid., p. 131).
The present work reveals Richter’s emergence from a period of more reserved coloration, the artist instead returning to the vibrant palette first seen in his works from the early 1980s. The uppermost layers thus recall the artist’s earliest mature abstract works. Meanwhile, the underlayers express the subdued whites and grays which held increasing prominence in his work from the late 1990s, as Richter deepened his formal engagement with the German Romantic tradition. By obscuring his more recent style with the colors of his first works, Richter poignantly provides bookends to his legendary career across one work. The interaction between the surface and the depth of the Abstraktes Bilder represent one of the most enduring and powerful of Richter’s painterly effects. Abstraktes Bild (2008) occupies a pivotal position within Richter’s sustained engagement with abstraction. The painting encapsulates the artist’s iterative method. Its cycles of construction and erasure yield a dense temporal record which resists any single resolution. At once chromatically assertive and structurally measured, the work reconciles the exuberance of Richter’s earlier abstract vocabulary with the cooler restraint that characterizes his later production. Through its layered complexity and quiet internal equilibrium, the present work is a compelling testament to Richter’s ongoing commitment to painting as a site of critical inquiry and sustained reflection.
Across a period years, Richter continually engaged this canvas, adding and subtracting pigment from the work’s surface as he simultaneously pushed and pulled paint across the surface of the tableau. The present work exemplifies this extended process, each visible layer revealing an alternative ending or possible solution to the work. In-progress photographs reveal the gradual evolution of the work. The first state is a photorealistic painting of a misty alpine scene, inspired by Richter’s alpine retreat in Sils, Switzerland. Richter then employed his signature blur to the composition, abstracting the imagery into a hazy white tableau reminiscent of his pure white paintings. The final state exhibits radical alterations, demonstrating the artist’s constant strive towards new artistic heights, challenging his own artistic orthodoxy.
Richter slowly refined his meticulous process for making the Abstraktes Bilder over his decades-long career. As he noted, “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, illusionist look to it, though done without using a photograph. This first, smooth, soft-edged surface is like a finished picture… I partly destroy, partly add to it… at that stage the whole thing looks very spontaneous, but in between there are long intervals of time. It is a highly planned kind of spontaneity” (quoted in C. Moeineau, “The Blow-Up, Primary Colours and Duplications,” in op. cit., p. 131). From the mid-1980s, Richter began to engage his now-iconic squeegee technique on his abstract works, and from the early 1990s the spatula. These two implements engage in the systematic eradication of the artist’s hand, creating an abstract painting devoid of gestural or expressionist remnants. “What we are given instead is a temporal depth: the summation of several units of moments,” writes the art historian Camille Moeineau (ibid., p. 131).
The present work reveals Richter’s emergence from a period of more reserved coloration, the artist instead returning to the vibrant palette first seen in his works from the early 1980s. The uppermost layers thus recall the artist’s earliest mature abstract works. Meanwhile, the underlayers express the subdued whites and grays which held increasing prominence in his work from the late 1990s, as Richter deepened his formal engagement with the German Romantic tradition. By obscuring his more recent style with the colors of his first works, Richter poignantly provides bookends to his legendary career across one work. The interaction between the surface and the depth of the Abstraktes Bilder represent one of the most enduring and powerful of Richter’s painterly effects. Abstraktes Bild (2008) occupies a pivotal position within Richter’s sustained engagement with abstraction. The painting encapsulates the artist’s iterative method. Its cycles of construction and erasure yield a dense temporal record which resists any single resolution. At once chromatically assertive and structurally measured, the work reconciles the exuberance of Richter’s earlier abstract vocabulary with the cooler restraint that characterizes his later production. Through its layered complexity and quiet internal equilibrium, the present work is a compelling testament to Richter’s ongoing commitment to painting as a site of critical inquiry and sustained reflection.