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I pursue no objectives, no systems, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don’t know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty.
-Gerhard Richter
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Gerhard Richter, the contemporary German artist born in 1932, is one of those artists whose thoughts about his work have made me appreciate to his work much more fully. He has a way of putting things in terms that are accessible, not just balloons filled with pompous artspeak that says very little. More than that, much of what he says aligns with how I see art and the purpose of art, even though our work manifests itself in very different ways. I often come something he has said or written that very much echoes my own thoughts, often in a a very similar way. For example, he speaks about the rightness of art, something I to which I also often refer.
His work has moved around through the years through his iconic abstractions to photography and photorealism painting. I tend to gravitate and think of his work in terms of his abstract work, the Abstraktes Bild series from the 1980’s and the 2010’s. I thought I’d share a few of those pieces along with some his thoughts.
At the very bottom is a piece of music from guitarist Bill Frisell. It is from a project that combined Richter’s work, specifically a large book of his art, along with an album from Frisell titled Richter 858. Each track on the album correlates to a piece of Richter’s art. The piece of music below corresponds to the painting directly above it, Abstrakte Bild 858-3. Interesting concept.
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I believe that art has a kind of rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false.
-Gerhard Richter
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My paintings are wiser than I am.
-Gerhard Richter
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I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy.
-Gerhard Richter
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I believe that the quintessential task of every painter in any time has been to concentrate on the essential.
-Gerhard Richter
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The desire to please is maligned, unfairly. There are many sides to it. First of all, pictures have to arouse interest before people will even look at them, and then they have to show something that holds that interest – and naturally they have to be presentable, just as a song has to be sung well, otherwise people run away. One mustn’t underrate this quality, and I have always been delighted when my pieces have also appealed to the museum guards, the laymen.
-Gerhard Richter
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Gerhard Richter- Abstraktes Bild 858-3
That last quotation’s a good one. I often say something’s “caught” my attention. It can be art, or something in nature, or a comment someone makes, but if the initial “catching” isn’t there, or if there’s nothing substantial enough to hold my attention, I move on.
Yes, that quote really hit for me as well. Art, at its best, should have the ability to transmit its message across a wide spectrum of people, to have some sort of universal appeal. One of the things that has meant the most to me after many years of showing my work is the number of people, from incredibly diverse backgrounds, who have never shown an interest in art before or have been intimidated by the perceived highbrow aspect of art, who are drawn to my work. Many have made my work their first art purchase and some have moved on to become avid collectors of my work and that of other artists. The gratification from this is one of the great perks of this job.