From his "Writings", the following refer to quotations regarding photography, its relationship with painting, and the "blur":
"The photograph is the most perfect picture. It does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous, unconditional, devoid of style. Both in its ways of informing, and in what it informs of, it is my source."[13]
"I don't create blurs. Blurring is not the most important thing; nor is it an identity tag for my pictures. When I dissolve demarcations and create, this is not in order to destroy the representation, or to make it more artistic or less precise. The flowing transitions, the smooth equalizing surface, clarify the content and make the representation credible (an "alla prima" impasto would be too reminiscent of painting, and would destroy the illusion)."
"I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant information."
在1982年和1983年間,李希特做了一系列的蠟燭和骷髏的繪畫,與虛空靜物畫等傳統題材有關。受喬治·德·拉·圖爾(Georges de La Tour)和法蘭西斯科·德·祖巴蘭(Francisco de Zurbarán)等藝術家影響,李希特先在自己的工作室拍攝靜物照,安排桌面上蠟燭和頭骨的位置,和不同的自然光,再繪畫下來。蠟燭畫與首批大型抽象繪畫,與當時繽紛俏皮卻了無意義的藝術作品,反差極大,此類型靜物作品總計約有27件。[28]1995年,德累斯頓舉辦第二次世界大戰期間遭受盟軍轟炸50週年紀念,就將李希特的蠟燭畫作品被放大展出於易北河旁,俯瞰整個城市作為復興的象徵。[29]
李希特的 4900顏色 從2007年明亮的單色正方形,轉變成隨機排列的網格,創造出令人驚嘆的萬花筒效果。同時進行的,還有科隆主教座堂的南面窗戶設計。 4900顏色包括25種顏色及196種版型,可以組合達11種變化–可從表面延伸色塊,或多種小色塊組合。李希特也為蛇形畫廊另外發展了 Version II - 49幅每件尺寸為97乘97公分的繪畫作品。[45]
2002年,則是為迪亞藝術基金會(Dia Art Foundation)製作一個玻璃雕塑,利用七個平行的玻璃,折射光和周遭的空間,讓該展出空間表現出多樣的視覺面貌;Spiegel I 和 Spiegel II,則是從1989年尺寸為7英尺長和18英尺長的兩塊鏡面來組合,改變了環境的邊界以及畫廊的觀看經驗;而1992年的作品 Kugel,是以球面不銹鋼作為鏡子,同時與空間相互照映。[49]從2002年開始,則利用三維玻璃結構,製作了一系列如 66 Standing Glass Panels(2002/2011)的作品。[50]
素描
2010年美國紐約繪畫中心(the Drawing Center)舉辦了 不存在的線條(Lines which do not exist)展覽,將李希特1966年至2005年的素描做一個整理及調查,包括使用機械干預方式製作的創作,例如將鉛筆連結到電鑽。 這也是自2002年於現代藝術博物館的展覽 40 Years of Painting 之後,李希特第一次於美國有較完整的回顧。[51] 在 不存在的線條 的展覽評論當中,RH Lossi提及:“作為一個個人的(可能是專業的)缺陷,李希特的繪畫實踐包括記錄下不成功的-...李希特用他個人的、搖晃的、失敗的及物質的物件等證據,取代了藝術家雙手創作的概念。“[52]
委託
在他的整個職業生涯中,李希特拒絕了不少交易和豐厚私人佣金的機會。一件9×9½英尺的大型作品,描繪了米兰主教座堂和19世紀的埃马努埃莱二世拱廊街,命名為 米蘭大教堂廣場(1968年),此作品就是西門子公司所委託所繪畫的,它從1968年到1998年掛在該公司位於米蘭的辦公室。此件作品在1998年在倫敦蘇富比拍出高達360萬美元的高價。[53]1980年,李希特和伊薩·根澤肯被委託設計杜伊斯堡的König-Heinrich-Platz地鐵站;並在1992年完成施工。1986年,李希特也為杜塞爾多夫的維多麗亞保險公司製作了兩件大型作品 Victoria I 及 Victoria II 。[54] 1990年,他與索爾·勒維特和奧斯瓦爾德·馬蒂亞斯·翁格爾斯一起為杜塞爾多夫的巴伐利亞抵押及本票銀行(Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank)創作作品。1998年,李希特為柏林德國國會大廈的整修,利用德国国旗的顏色來做設計。
Richter first began exhibiting in Düsseldorf in 1963. Richter had his first gallery solo show in 1964 at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. Soon after, he had exhibitions in Munich and Berlin and by the early 1970s exhibited frequently throughout Europe and the United States. In 1966, Bruno Bischofberger was the first to show Richter's works outside Germany. Richter's first retrospective took place at the Kunsthalle Bremen in 1976 and covered works from 1962 to 1974. A traveling retrospective at Düsseldorf's Kunsthalle in 1986 was followed in 1991 by a retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London. In 1993 he received a major touring retrospective "Gerhard Richter: Malerei 1962–1993" curated by Kasper König, with a three volume catalogue edited by Benjamin Buchloch. This exhibition containing 130 works carried out over the course of thirty years, was to entirely reinvent Richter's career.
Richter became known to a U.S. audience in 1990, when the Saint Louis Art Museum circulated Baader-Meinhof (October 18, 1977), a show that that was later seen at the Lannan Foundation in Marina del Rey, California.[60] Richter's first North American retrospective was in 1998 at the Art Gallery of Ontario and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In 2002, a 40-year retrospective of Richter's work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. He has participated in several international art shows, including the Venice Biennale (1972, 1980, 1984, 1997 and 2007), as well as Documenta V (1972), VII (1982), VIII (1987), IX (1992), and X (1997).[來源請求] In 2006, an exhibition at the Getty Center connected the landscapes of Richter to the Romantic pictures of Caspar David Friedrich, showing that both artists "used abstraction, expansiveness, and emptiness to express transcendent emotion through painting."[61]
Although Richter gained popularity and critical praise throughout his career, his fame burgeoned during his 2005 retrospective exhibition, which declared his place among the most important artists of the 20th century. Today, many call Gerhard Richter the best living painter. In part, this comes from his ability to explore the medium at a time when many were heralding its death. Richter has been the recipient of numerous distinguished awards, including the State Prize of the state North Rhine-Westphalia in 2000; the Wexner Prize, 1998; the Praemium Imperiale, Japan, 1997; the Golden Lion of the 47th Biennale, Venice, 1997; the Wolf Prize in Israel in 1994/5; the Kaiserring Prize der Stadt Goslar, Mönchehaus-Museum für Moderne Kunst, Goslar, Germany, 1988; the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Vienna, 1985; the Arnold Bode Prize, Kassel, 1981; and the Junger Western Art Prize, Germany, 1961. He was made an honorary citizen of Cologne in April 2007.
Following an exhibition with Blinky Palermo at Galerie Heiner Friedrich in 1971, Richter's formal arrangement with the dealer came to an end in 1972. Thereafter Friedrich was only entitled to sell the paintings that he had already obtained contractually from Richter. In the following years, Richter showed with Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, and Sperone Westwater, New York. Today Richter is represented by Marian Goodman,[69] his primary dealer since 1985.
Today, museums own roughly 38% of Richter's works, including half of his large abstract paintings. By 2004, Richter's annual turnover was $120 million.[70] At the same time, his works often appear at auction. According to artnet, an online firm that tracks the art market, $76.9 million worth of Richter's work was sold at auction in 2010. Richter's high turnover volume reflects his prolificacy as well as his popularity. As of 2012, no fewer than 545 distinct Richter's works had sold at auctions for more than $100,000. 15 of them had sold for more than $10,000,000 between 2007 and 2012.[71] Richter's paintings have been flowing steadily out of Germany since the mid-1990s even as certain important German collectors – Frieder Burda, Josef Fröhlich, Georg Böckmann, and Ulrich Ströher – have held on to theirs.
Richter's candle paintings were the first to command high auction prices. Three months after his MoMA exhibition opened in 2001, Sotheby's sold his Three Candles (1982) for $5.3 million. In February 2008, the artist's eldest daughter, Betty, sold her Kerze (1983) for £7,972,500 ($15 million), triple the high estimate, at Sotheby's in London.[72] His 1982 Kerze (Candle) sold for £10.5 million ($16.5 million) at Christie's London in October 2011.[73]
In February 2008, Christie's London set a first record for Richter's "capitalist realism" pictures from the 1960s by selling the painting Zwei Liebespaare (1966) for £7,300,500 ($14.3 million)[74] to Stephan Schmidheiny. In 2010, the Weserburg modern art museum in Bremen, Germany, decided to sell Richter's 1966 painting Matrosen (Sailors) in a November auction held by Sotheby's, where John D. Arnold bought it for $13 million.[75]Vierwaldstätter See, the largest of a distinct series of four views of Lake Lucerne painted by Richter in 1969, sold for £15.8 million ($24 million) at Christie's London in 2015.[76]
Another coveted group of works is the Abstrakte Bilder series, particularly those made after 1988, which are finished with a large squeegee rather than a brush or roller. At Pierre Bergé & Associés in July 2009, Richter's 1979 oil painting Abstraktes Bild exceeded its estimate, selling for €95,000 ($136,000).[77] Richter's Abstraktes Bild, of 1990 was made the top price of 7.2 million pounds, or about $11.6 million, at a Sotheby's sale in February 2011 to a bidder who was said by dealers to be an agent for the New York dealer Larry Gagosian.[78] In November 2011, Sotheby's sold a group of colorful abstract canvases by Richter, including Abstraktes Bild 849-3, which made a record price for the artist at auction when Lily Safra[79] paid $20.8 million[80] only to donate it to the Israel Museum afterwards. Months later, a record $21.8 million was paid at Christie's for the 1993 painting Abstraktes Bild 798-3.[81]Abstraktes Bild (809-4), one of the artist's abstract canvases from 1994, was sold by Eric Clapton at Sotheby's to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million in late 2012. (It had been estimated to bring $14.1 million to $18.8 million.[82] When asked about amounts like that Richter said "It's just as absurd as the banking crisis. It's impossible to understand and it's daft!"[83]
In 2007, Corinna Belz made a short film called Gerhard Richter's Window where the media-shy artist appeared on camera for the first time in 15 years. In 2011, Belz's feature-length documentary entitled Gerhard Richter Painting was released. The film focused almost entirely on the world's highest paid living artist producing his large-scale abstract squeegee works in his studio [84]
名言語錄
"One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy."[13]
"Perhaps because I'm sorry for the photograph, because it has such a miserable existence even though it is such a perfect picture, I would like to make it valid, make it visible – just make it (even if what I make is worse than the photograph). And this making is something that I can't grasp, or figure out and plan. That is why I keep on and on painting from photographs, because I can't make it out, because the only thing to do with photographs is paint from them. Because it attracts me to be so much at the mercy of a thing, to be so far from mastering it."[13]
"No one painting is meant to be more beautiful than, or even different from any other. Nor is it meant to be like any other, but the same: the same, though each was painted individually and by itself, not all together and all of a piece, like Multiples. I intended them to look the same but not be the same, and I intended this to be visible."[13]
"Painting has nothing to do with thinking, because in painting thinking is painting. Thinking is language – record-keeping – and has to take place before and after. Einstein did not think when he was calculating: he calculated – producing the next equation in reaction to the one that went before – just as in painting one form is a response to another, and so on."
"It makes no sense to expect or claim to 'make the invisible visible', or the unknown known, or the unthinkable thinkable. We can draw conclusions about the invisible; we can postulate its existence with relative certainty. But we all can represent is an analogy, which stands for the invisible but is not it."[13]
"The best thing that could have happened to art was its divorce from government."[85]
"Everything made since Duchamp has been a readymade, even when hand-painted."
At a Q&A ahead of his retrospective at the Tate Modern on 4 October 2011, he was asked: "Has the role of artist changed over the years?" Richter replied: "It's more entertainment now. We entertain people."