Page 30 - Studio International - September 1972

paint, and nothing but pure paint. He portrays
colour-cards from paint manufacturers; presents
a series of pornographic pictures; he surprises
with illusionistic trompe-l'oeil effects (Curtain
Picture, Five Doors, Window Picture); he uses
photographic tricks and retouching in order to
turn the illusion of space on its head. With his
typed oeuvre-catalogue he moves towards
conceptual art. In 1963, with Konrad Lueg, he
organized a 'Demonstration for Capitalist-
Realism' in a Düsseldorf furniture store as a
kind of Happening where the entire shop was
declared to be the exhibition and guided tours
were arranged.
These varied interests in many kinds of
painting, action and process art show that
Richter is anything but a one-sided and
determined ideologist, and that, no matter what
he does, he always pushes experimentation to its
extreme limits. 'Aesthetic problems do not
interest me' he has said 'and the way a painting
is made is not important. The pictures are not
distinguished one from another and I want to be
able to change the method as often as it is
required.'
Richter's prodigious versatility and the range
and delicacy of his paintings pose the problem
of what it is in them which makes them
important and urgent now and what it is which
makes them unique. Does he want to inspire
uncertainty, to transform artistically actual
social conditions ? Does he want to point to the
difficulties involved in perceiving and
understanding the real world ? Does he want
his kind of realism to blind one so, that the
scales fall from one's eyes ? Does he want his
sentimental landscapes to stimulate the emotions
or to inspire doubt about the value of the
technological world ?
Richter's work possibly contains elements of
all these. It is simultaneously everything and
(Top)
Drinking Woman 1968 nothing. 'Pictures must be made from recipes',
95 x 115 cm. he has said, 'Their making must take place free
from inward involvement like stone-breaking or
(Above)
Olympia 1967 house-painting. The making itself is not an
200 X 130 cm. artistic act.' Such a statement shows clearly that
Richter has touched the nerve of one of today's
(Top right)
Christa and Wolfi 1964 most urgent artistic problems. Many amateur
15o x 13o cm. snaps are more beautiful than a Cezanne, he has
said, 'and they have above all nothing to do with
(Centre right)
Mrs Baker 1965 the academy, with the restricting examples
46 X 40 cm. which had been set before me and from which I
wanted to free myself. The photograph had to
(Right)
Nude on a Staircase 1966 mean more to me than art history for it was the
200 X 130 cm. reflection of my reality, our reality, and I took it
not as a substitute for reality but as a crutch to
help me understand reality.' And he has also
said: 'Since there are no more priests and
philosophers the artists are the most important
people on earth. That is emancipation, for we
no longer need philosophers or the church. The
church now has other tasks and responsibilities.
Art no longer serves anyone. It has made itself
self-sufficient. I cannot describe the new
situation for I cannot describe art. It reveals
what it is only in making it.'q

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