Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting Details
From Publishers Weekly This biography of painter Gerhard Richter presents a portrait of an artist who has famously resisted associations between his personal life and his five-decades-long artistic oeuvre. But Elger glosses over so many important incidents in Richter's life that the link between his art and his life remains elusive. In an otherwise astute but dense text, Elger traces Richter's artistic evolution: an introverted teenager living in postwar East Germany, who did poorly in high school art classes; influenced by the abstract art of Jackson Pollock and Wilhelm Nay; the culmination Richter's 2002 stained glass windows for the Cologne Cathedral. Elger persuasively identifies Richter's life work as an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of abstraction and as an investigation into the complexity of reality and the contradictions within objectivity and human perception. Elger's analysis is largely based on interviews with Richter published in The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1962–1993. But he does not spend much time on Richter's private life; a personal crisis in the mid-'70s is only briefly mentioned, and while Elger's expression is generally elegant, the translation is flawed; the sentence structure is sometimes belabored. 78 color and 103 b&w illus. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more From Booklist Gerhard Richter, one of the world’s most acclaimed artists, has worked feverishly for decades, continually exploring new subjects and approaches in paintings that shimmer as elegant attempts at distancing. Born in the lovely, doomed city of Dresden a year before Hitler became chancellor, Richter came of age in East Germany, where his remarkable talents were harnessed to Soviet-imposed social realism. Disciplined and ambitious, Richter made the most of oppressive circumstances, then defected to West Germany where he achieved success first as a pop-art star with his strikingly blurred photo-paintings, works in sync with, yet far more poetic than, Andy Warhol’s silk screens. Although Richter is orderly and reserved, curator and confidant Elger, director of the artist’s archives, writes knowledgeably and insightfully about the personal experiences and deep feelings underlying the polished surfaces of Richter’s mysterious portraits, complex abstractions, and beautiful landscapes and seascapes. Elger also elucidates Richter’s aesthetics of detachment and ambiguity, use of photographs, and pursuit of what Richter calls “pure picture.” An enlightening foundational portrait of an artist who will stand the test of time. --Donna Seaman Read more Review “Gerhard Richter, one of the world’s most acclaimed artists, has worked feverishly for decades, continually exploring new subjects and approaches in paintings that shimmer as elegant attempts at distancing. Born in the lovely, doomed city of Dresden a year before Hitler became chancellor, Richter came of age in East Germany, where his remarkable talents harnessed to Soviet-imposed social realism. Disciplined and ambitious, Richter made the most of oppressive circumstances, then defected to West Germany, where he achieved success first as a pop-art star with his strikingly blurred photo-paintings, works in sync with yet far more poetic than Andy Warhol’s silk screens. Although Richter is orderly and reserved, curator and confidant Elger, director of the artist’s archives, writes knowledgeably and insightfully about the personal experiences and deep feelings underlying the polished surfaces of Richter’s mysterious portraits, complex abstractions, and beautiful landscapes and seascapes. Elger also elucidates Richter’s aesthetics of detachment and ambiguity, use of photographs, and pursuit of what Richter calls ‘pure picture.’ An enlightening foundational portrait of an artist who will stand the test of time.” (Booklist)“Among the many triumphs of Dietmar Elger’s landmark first biography of the artist, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, written with full access to his archives, is to show how Richter’s apparently neutral tones are part of a long, complicated fight against traditional German emotionalism. . . . Elger creates a splendid portrait of Germany’s postwar amnesia refracted through the prism of Richter’s rapid developments. Although over-discreet – obscure, even – about the artist’s private life, he unravels a psychologically compelling story: how across the decades Richter’s art of restraint and non-commitment reaches its high points when he dared let flamboyance or emotion in by stealth.” (Financial Times) Read more About the Author Dietmar Elger is the director of the Gerhard Richter Archive and chief curator at the Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. He is the former curator for painting and sculpture at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. Between 1984 and 1985 he was the secretary in Gerhard Richter’s studio. He has organized numerous exhibitions on modern and contemporary art and has written and edited their accompanying catalogs. Read more
Reviews
One of the greatest living artists, this biography on Richter is fascinating. He moves between hyper realism and abstraction easily, as well as painting and photography, and painting photographs. His concern is his method, seeming to study the way the paint is applied to the canvas, and then manipulated when it is there. Personal details of Richter's life have been skipped over, but his life's work is well handled. I highly recommend it.