by Cristina Baldacci
A reflection on painting may perhaps seem anachronistic in this context, but I still think that looking to the past, and in particular to the history of painting and its great masters, can be a way to understand the present and the future of art.
And, above all, if looking within oneself – intended as an interpretive and constructive act – is the key to keeping a language alive whose “death” has been repeatedly declared. This conviction derives in part also from the long-time interest in the work of Gerhard Richter, who for over fifty years has been involved in rigorous, and in certain ways obsessive, research on the significance and pertinence of painting. His investigations have led him to reconsider the genres and styles of the past, to such an extent that his method has been defined as a constant “break in style as principle of style.”[1]
Despite the doubts and disappointments that have accompanied his practice, Richter has never stopped thinking that: “Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving a shape to that sense. It is like the religious search for God. We are well aware that making sense and picturing are artificial, like illusion; but we can never give them up. For belief (thinking out and interpreting the present and the future) is our most important characteristic.”[2]
That is why he has tried to erase the distance between figuration and abstraction and, in an even more important way, between painting and photography. An image is such beyond the method of representation and the medium employed. What changes over time is the ideological substrate that lies behind and has led to realizing it, above all if this involves a painted image. If we move beyond the conceptual aspect, which is bound to a given age and outlook, a masterpiece will never be “a thing of the past” and will always pertain to us “as art that we ostentatiously defend (perceive, show, make).”
Gerhard Richter, Verkündigung nach Tizian (343-1), 2014 | Annunciation after Titian (343-1),
Diasec mounted giclée print on aluminium composite panel, 125 x 200 cm | Inv. P-12 | Private collection | © Gerhard Richter
Richter may then look at a painting by Titian, Vermeer, Friedrich and imitate it, more or less explicitly, through the lens and filter of the camera: his iconographic models – all collected in this visual encyclopedic atlas (Atlas, 1962-2013) – are nevertheless photos. This allows him to stay as close as possible to reality and keep a distance from the subject selected; be it a work on art history he admires (Annunciation after Titian, 1973), the portrait of a beloved person (Reading, 1994), or a seemingly romantic landscape (Rainbow, 1970). Does painting have a future? For Richter the answer is yes, but we need to make images and models free from any mimetic or metaphysical illusion. The “out-of-focus” effect, typical of photography – an effect he obtains by hazing with the brush or stretching the damp painting fabric with a spatula – helps him stay objective, but it is also and above all a (suffered) declaration on the impossibility of clearly seeing reality; a timeless wavering between things appearing and disappearing.
[1] Klaus Honnef, “Schwierigkeiten beim Beschreiben der Realität: Richters Malerei zwischen Kunst und Wirklichkeit,” in Gerhard Richter, exh. cat. (Aachen, Gegenverkehr, Zentrum für aktuelle Kunst, March 27 – April 22, 1969): n. p.
[2]Gerhard Richter, “Notes, 1962”, in H-U.Obrist (ed.),Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting.Writings and Interviews, 1962-1993, Cambridge (MA)-London, MIT Press-Anthony d’Offay Gallery, 1995: 11-12.