Gerhard Richter

Two exhibitions at the Tate in London and Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris give viewers a new vantage on the work of the German master.

Any attempt to understand why every new episode in Gerhard Richter's work is consistently beautiful and unique must avoid all analytical approaches, although this is precisely the favourite exercise of many of his exegetes and exactly what Benjamin H.D. Buchloh does in the fine catalogue that accompanies his recent works. The German artist has always provided generous access to the picture sources of the refined procedures behind his works, in a modern exercise of democratic vision that indirectly strengthens the objectivity of his work, whether you adore his crystalline photographic rendering on canvas or enthuse over his more calculated abstractions.

But people have overwhelmingly confused the pictorial-flux process with its practice since the critical success of his splendid Atlas was translated into an exercise of input and compositional method in art schools the world over. In fact, for decades now, Gerhard Richter has been the contemporary artist who has most stringently addressed our recent history, as in his October, 18 1977 series.

Top: Gerhard Richter, <i>Abstract Painting,</i> 1990, Tate Modern, acquired 1992. © Gerhard Richter.<br />Above: Gerhard Richter, <i>Forest (3)</i> and <i>Forest (4),</i> 1990. Private collection (left) and The Fisher Collection, San Francisco (right). © Gerhard Richter. Photos Lucy Dawkins. — Top: Gerhard Richter, *Abstract Painting,* 1990, Tate Modern, acquired 1992. © Gerhard Richter.
Above: Gerhard Richter, *Forest (3)* and *Forest (4),* 1990. Private collection (left) and The Fisher Collection, San Francisco (right). © Gerhard Richter. Photos Lucy Dawkins.

An exhaustive selection of his huge and highly controlled production is the focus of a splendid masterpiece-exhibition entitled Panorama at Tate Modern and shows that the artist has managed to root his public's faith in the intrinsic potential of a discipline that seemed to have no future. Richter has incorporated every aesthetic medium into the perfection of his painting and the current exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris adds another piece to this puzzle.

Visitors enter with the unease generated by the technical description of the works on display but are captivated by the masochistic action of one of the greatest living painters. Stubbornly and with great strategic ability, the German master deliberately moves the public away from what is commonly considered painting's state of grace. Who would think that the secret of such simplicity and magnificence in the works on show were closely linked to an arid procedure: vertical slicing, subsequent pondering and then obsessive repetition of a piece of his 1990 Abstract Painting (CR:724-4). Richter's fascination with celibate iconography and conceptualism are revealed in his constant ability to proliferate images.

Gerhard Richter, <i>Demo,</i> 1997. The Rachofsky Collection. © Gerhard Richter. — Gerhard Richter, *Demo,* 1997. The Rachofsky Collection. © Gerhard Richter.

Abandoning the brush stroke in favour of computer-generation is just a more-or-less sophisticated ploy to reinforce the vertigo. In painting terms, the digital treatment denies the magnificent effect but, at the same time, the conscious waiving of the physicality of the medium projects this work towards a site-specific dimension.

For decades now, Gerhard Richter has been the contemporary artist who has most stringently addressed our recent history.

Gerhard Richter, <i>6 Standing Glass Panes,</i> 2011. Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris. — Gerhard Richter, *6 Standing Glass Panes,* 2011. Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris.

The exhibition gives visitors an unusual outlook and is not simply a calculated exercise in style. The 6 Standing Glass Panes sculpture is the fulcrum of this ploy, which Richter has been using for at least 50 years but that is now far closer to Dan Graham's research than the mute replicas of Duchamp's The Large Glass. It is another piece in the sweeping vision and a slightly perverse perceptive machine, almost a mise en abyme of the mathematical or cerebral aspects of conceptualism and abstraction. The outcome is surprising, an all-over painting sensation achieved with great spatial control and without a single picture in the true sense of the word. A simple act like that in the opening shot of the trailer of Corinna Belz's new film Gerhard Richter, Painting becomes epic, calculated and capable of absorbing and summing up the digital aesthetic that surrounds us.
Ivo Bonacorsi

Gerhard Richter: Painting 2010–2011
On view through 3 November 2011
Galerie Marian Goodman
79 Rue Du Temple
Paris

Gerhard Richter: Panorama
On view through 8 January 2012
Tate Modern, Bankside
London

Gerhard Richter,<i>Reader,</i> 1994.
© Gerhard Richter. Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. — Gerhard Richter,*Reader,* 1994. © Gerhard Richter. Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Gerhard Richter

Two exhibitions at the Tate in London and Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris give viewers a new vantage on the work of the German master.

Latest on Art

Latest on Domus