104 ing his work ethic and it is very fascinating to Mary Lane, the readers of the article and also people around the globe who have seen his work. Richter though was an extremely motivated artist, he wanted to catchup to Duchamp, the artist who made the Fountain 1917. He wantedto make objects out of signs with titles that confronted his audience, the world, with beauty that no man can comprehend that it could take away the horrors of many individuals modern lives. The very first sentence starting off the article before the interview pretty much explains all of Gerhard Richter, “In 1982, Gerhard Richter, a middleaged defector from communist East Germany, described the capitalistic West German art world as “one vast scene of pettiness, lies, deceit, depravity, wretchedness, stupidity, nonsense, impudence,” 3. Gerhard Richter thinks normal art is boring, he can go on for hours on why a normal artist who paints landscapes and people to life, will be no where near as interesting as someone who paints, sculpts and performs straight from his/ her imagination. An
example of this could be Gerhard’s Party painting, when I looked at this painting, at first I did not see anything special. It just looked like a bunch of people sitting down enjoying their drinks laughing when then I saw the mans mouth. There was blood pouring out of it into his glass acting as his drink, then I looked at everyone else and the whole painting has stitch marks and little bits of blood pouring out of them. Some other marks were gold scratches that took up most of the bottom left corner while the rest of the painting is dominated by the stitches. Gerhard Richter’s work fascinates people and makes them wonder, why does he paint like this? Why does he do work like this and there is no answer. “The problem is now that all of nature, everything, is captured in photographs, so there is nothing to paint. This, for me, puts some fantasy back into it,” ~ Gerhard Richter. He is exactly right, being an artist who mixes up all of his mediums in today’s world, it is very hard for him to paint something he loves because it has probably already been
taken in a photograph. Even though Richter hate painting off realism, he actually does it every now and then and what comes out usually does not look like what he was staring at. One man named Christian Fauné was lucky enough to end up in a gallery where Richter was showing off his work, he was able to meet him but did not have a chance to get in a conversation. Until he was given a chance to meet the great artist, Christian ended up next to Gerhard only to impress the artist. Before he met him though, he asked one of his friends this, “What do you say to Picasso,”4. The Linda Pellegrini, the galleries communications director, asked encouraged that he approached Gerhard Richter which he ended up doing. One of his friends from Copenhagen texted to ask what the experience of meeting the great Gerhard Richter and getting to talk to him in person for a good while. His answer was that “Freund, wherever great art appears, the earth moves.” Gerhard Richter even amazes people with all of his work while others who have not seen it in person judge it and say
that it is not good art. Overall Gerhard Richter has gone from rock bottom as a young boy by being affected by the war, to becoming one of the most famous artists in the world. Gerhard Richter, one of the most successful complex artists in the world, decided to play with many types of art to see how people would react. Going back to the Rhombus painting, we see that it is just a normal orange Rhombus in the middle of a white canvas. What we don’t see are the many layers of paint underneath it. This goes back to the Aristotle and Plato. They ask the world if our mind, a non-physical entity,can control our body, a physical entity. So that is what this painting really means, how can you see the many different layers underneath the orange, or can you even see the colors? It also is not about the color, the paint will be super thick and clumpy in person because of all the layers that Gerhard Richter is giving this piece. It is like he is almost giving his Rhombus piece and all of his other works souls, they feel, alive.
Gerhard Richter, Chronology of Gerhard Richter, 2016 Mark Stevens, Paint by Numbers, November 1st, 2013 3 Mary Lane, Gerhard Richter at 82: Art Is Still ‘Sublime’, October 15th, 2014 4 Christian Viveros-Fauné , The Experience of Meeting Gerhard Richter: Seismic, May 6, 2016 1 2