Page 29 - Studio International - September 1972

(Top)
Teydelandschaft 197'
Oil on canvas, 135 x 15o cm.
(Centre)
Clouds (Triptych) 5970
Oil on canvas, zoo x 30o cm.
(Bottom)
Corsica 5 1969
Oil on canvas, 6o x 85 cm.

with the creation of a new kind of artistic reality
in a way different from, say, Rauschenberg, who
introduced photographs as a piece of reality, as
an extension of the real world into the picture.
Richter rather accepts the photograph as an aid
to the understanding of reality: 'I don't want to
imitate a photograph; I want to make one.'
But Richter cannot be understood in terms
of this idea alone. He can't be categorized. In
this he can be compared with Andy Warhol, and
Dieter Honisch does so in the Biennale catalogue:
`Like Warhol, Richter avoids any formal
attitudes. For both the line between art and life,
between illusion and reality is blurred. It is
difficult to determine on which level they
operate, whether on that of depicted reality, on
that of the reproduction, or on that of the
painted reproduction. Richter connects
everything together; but he also separates it in
such a way that the beauty of painting cannot be
achieved to the detriment of truth and truth
cannot be compromised for aesthetic reasons.'
Richter's doubts about what reality is are
obviously connected with his desire to fix in
paint the reality of a photograph in such a way
that a trace of doubt about the nature of reality
always remains. Richter is like the sphinx whose
smile is inexplicable and can mean many things.
Thus his art is both more complex and
thoughtful, more sceptical and scrupulous than
the art of today's neo-realists who coldly and
harshly illuminate reality and freeze it hard and
motionless. Richter, the sceptic, takes the frozen
reality, the photograph and copies it in order to
give it life.
`I wasn't able simply to declare a photograph
to be a work of art by saying so out loud',
Richter has said, 'That wouldn't even have been
a readymade. I therefore copied it, copied them
again and again in order, if possible, to reveal
what they contain, what the photograph still
withholds. It's something which constantly
fascinates me, something which has nothing to
do with colour, composition, rhythm or
whatever, something I cannot explain.'
The inexplicable: that is what runs like a
thread throughout Richter's work. He paints
like a virtuoso and with the greatest refinement
(clouds, seascapes); he paints brutally and
crudely (Alps, townscapes); he paints coarsely
and informally. He paints with his fingers in so
banal a fashion that the results shout out
(perhaps ironically) that they are paint, pure
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