Page 28 - Studio International - September 1972

(Top)
Evening Landscape 1970
15o X 200 CM.

(Centre)
Grosse Teydelandschaft 1971
Oil on canvas, 200 X 300 cm.
(Bottom)
Untitled Triptych 1971
18o x 32o cm.

that painting during this phase of objectivity
could be justified not by personal inspiration
but only by reality itself. Thus he arrived at
photography: the absolute and two-dimensional
representation of reality.'
We must understand this concern for the
depiction of objective reality if we are to grasp
the problems posed by Richter's early work. He
is by no means sure of the true nature of reality
and therefore copies photographs not only for
their subject-matter but also for their own
unique descriptive language. As he once
remarked, the subject of a photograph is as
much the way it describes an object as that
object itself; and he uses photographs as others
use studies for a painting, or as Vermeer used
the camera obscura. Richter here coolly
calculates and manipulates the difficulty and
imponderability of that which is. He remains
true to photographs and not to other kinds of
technical reproduction 'because I cannot
perceive as objectively as the camera can' and
because 'the projection of the photograph on to
the canvas releases me from having to perceive
what I am painting. For to know how long an
arm or a leg is is to know nothing important.'
The blurred grey veil through which the
original monochrome reality of the photograph
shimmers in Richter's work poses in painterly
terms the same problems as those posed by the
concrete object. Naturally it is difficult for a
painting, still tied to the subjective personality
of the hand-drawn mark, to make clear such
connections with the passive object removed
from its natural context. But Richter has
succeeded in establishing this connection
precisely because he relies on photography
which is the antithesis of everything artistic,
subjective and unique and which embodies
Richter's idea of anonymity and objectivity. 'I
do not blur my pictures to make a representation
seem more artistic through lack of clarity or to
give my style an individual note', says Richter,
`I rather equalize, neutralize what is depicted,
attempt to retain the anonymous gloss of the
photograph, to replace the craftsmanly-artistic
with the technical.' The respect which, for
example, the Zero-artists have for Richter shows
not least how a painter who remained true to
painting could produce work completely in
sympathy with the new aesthetic.
Certainly Richter's achievement partly
consists in the fact that he was early concerned

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