GERHARD RICHTER: I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY AND I’M SAYING IT

Last year, Gerhard Richter had to give up his title of being the most expensive artist alive to his American colleague Jeff Koons, whose "Balloon Dog" was auctioned off by Christie's in New York for $58.4 million in November 2013. Only a few months prior to that, Richter's "Cathedral Square, Milan" had changed owners at Sotheby's for only $37 million. The two artists could not be more different. Jeff Koons time and again indulges in staging himself, while Gerhard Richter is as far from doing so as Cologne is from New York. Richter shies away from publicity; he is, and actually has always been, quiet.

Reserved, modest, and yet open and humorous

One also gets this impression in the documentary "Gerhard Richter Painting" (2011). For this purpose, the artist opened the doors of his studio to the filmmaker Corinna Belz and let her film him while he was working. What resulted was a very personal and--how could it be any different--quiet film. It gets by without any music whatsoever. What remains in the viewer's mind is the sound that is made when the artist applies the paint to the canvas with an enormous palette knife and spreads it over its surface. Apart from that, there is only silence. There is probably no kind of music that would suit Richter anyway. The artist rarely comments on his work: "I have nothing to say and I'm saying it." He remains reserved, modest, and yet open and humorous. 

Richter's works are neither documentary nor fiction. In terms of style they are hyperrealistic or else abstract. There are no hierarchies with respect to technique, genre, or motif--he monopolizes all of them. He experiments, has dabbled over the years in photography, drawing, and sculpture. However, he remains loyal only to painting. Richter is convinced that "painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing."

Richter not only copies the photograph one-to-one, he intensifies the effects

The artist often finds the motifs for his paintings in magazines and newspapers. Over the decades, this has resulted in his "Atlas," a collection of motifs consisting of photographs, collages, and sketches that continues to expand. Richter collects anything that is too good to throw away. Since the seventies, he has been arranging many of the photos (family photographs and pictures he has taken himself) on paper, of which there are currently more than 800 panels.

His painting "Mr. Heyde" from 1965 is based on an image taken from the magazine "Der Spiegel." The photo shows two men, the one at the front apparently protecting the one to the rear, of whom we only see his face.

The face belongs to Werner Heyde. The picture was taken shortly after he gave himself up to the authorities in 1959. Heyde was one of the key figures in the execution of the Nazi euthanasia program in the late thirties. He committed suicide five days before his trial was to begin. Richter not only copies the photograph one-to-one, he intensifies the effects. Such as the shadow that is cast onto the wall behind the men by the camera's flash. The men's movement is also exaggerated, their outlines blurred; you would think they are rushing past. All of this, including the partial concealment of the main motif, is typical for paparazzi photographs. We also find elements of the paparazzi aesthetic in the work "Queen Elizabeth II": the painting recalls a photograph taken from a distance with a telephoto lens. The outlines of the subject's head and face nearly dissolve in the background. The image is grainy and blurred, like those highly enlarged images one is familiar with from newspapers.

Richter aspires to having his paintings look like photographs, and yet he smears the moist paint and in doing so lays a kind of veil over the actual motif. He obscures the truth within the image for the purpose of sharpening the viewer's gaze. For in some cases the viewer has to look twice, three times in order to precisely identify the subject of the painting. Photography is considered to be an objective medium. Although Richter's paintings resemble photographs, obscuration deprives them of their objectivity.

"Mr. Heyde" and "Queen Elizabeth II" are early examples of the blurred style that has become so typical for Gerhard Richter and which he pursued and perfected into the early years of the new millennium. In the process, he created not only color as well as black-and-white portraits, but also landscapes, still lifes, or even a history painting: "Annunciation after Titian."