Product Description

Ranging from photo-based pictures to gestural abstraction, Gerhard Richter's diverse body of work calls into question many widely held attitudes about the inherent importance of stylistic consistency, the "natural" evolution of individual artistic sensibility, the spontaneous component of creativity, and the relationship of technological means and mass media imagery to traditional studio methods and formats. Unlike many of his peers, he has explored these issues through the medium of painting, challenging it to meet the demands posed by new forms of conceptual art. In every level of his varied output--from his austere photo-based realism of the early 60s, to his brightly colored gestural abstractions of the early 80s, to his startling cycle of black-and-white paintings of the Baader-Meinhof group--Richter has assumed a critical distance from vanguardists and conservatives alike regarding what painting should be. The result has been among the most convincing renewal of painting's vitality to be found in late 20th- and early 21st-century art. With an extensive and insightful critical essay by curator Robert Storr, a recent interview with the artist, a chronology, an exhibition history, and nearly 300 color and duotone reproductions, "Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting" marks a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary art in general, and Gerhard Richter in particular.
By Robert Storr.

10 x 11.25 in.
138 color, 87 duotone illustrations

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126730 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-02
• Released on: 2002-02-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
The beautiful catalog Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting accompanies the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective of this prolific and important German artist. Richter's many artistic achievements vacillate between pure abstraction and a kind of realism. His realistic paintings, based primarily on personal photographs and images from newspapers, range in subject matter from the banal, like rolls of toilet paper, to the extremely potent, such as famous Nazi "doctor" Werner Hyde. The paintings have in common an emotional remove; the re-creating of photographic images points us toward our own possible emotional detachment to the influx of images in the world. A blurred chair, Jackie Kennedy, burning candles, family portraits--Richter lays them all out before us as if to say, Here, they are all the same. The insightful text by MoMA curator Robert Storr provides an in-depth look at Richter's life in postwar Germany, tracing the influences and environment that made his work possible. The book includes a revealing interview with the artist and a detailed chronology of his life and work, plus 138 color illustrations and 165 duotones. --J.P. Cohen

From Library Journal
With this catalog of the first major U.S. retrospective of the remarkably diverse paintings of the German-born Richter, Storr (senior curator of painting and sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, NY; Gerhard Richter: October 18, 1977) sets out to increase our understanding of Richter to parallel that of American contemporary post-abstract expressionists (among them, Jasper Johns and Robert Ryman). Storr's fascinating introductory and biographical essay frames the historical, art, and personal movements that have provoked Richter's exploration of painting's place in a world rent by World War II, photography, and abstraction. Among other insights, Storr hits on the distancing discomfort of studying Richter's photo-based paintings when he cites the painter's "calculated discretion" in dealing with catastrophic subject matter, such as aspects of the Holocaust. Over 200 color and duotone images, gorgeously reproduced, firmly document the full range of this vital artist, encompassing everything from his intense, colorful abstractions to his gray-scale photo-reproductions to his highly realistic portraits and still lifes, and more. An interview with Richter fills out the book. This will be the standard on Richter for some time to come, and it is essential for all serious art collections. Rebecca Miller, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Auster's typewriter will be forever preserved in this wonderful little book..." -- Rain Taxi Review of Books, Fall 2002

Curator Robert Storr—who also wrote the catalog's penetrating 80-page essay—…. effectively streamlines the story. -- The Village Voice, February 25, 2002 – Jerry Saltz

Richter perfectly captures the way we look at things, hazily, momentarily, in a flash, and temporarily "preserves" it… -- Artnet.com, January 30, 2002 – Charlie Finch

Whatever your favorite Richters, this is one exhibition, curated to perfection, which will reward repeated viewings. -- Artnet.com, February 21, 2002 – Charlie Finch

…his forty-year career comes off as a resounding hosanna of piquant, good, and great paintings, with something for everyone. -- The New Yorker, February 25, 2002 -- Peter Schjeldahl

…one of the finest, most beautiful and strangely moving exhibitions of the work of a living painter in years. -- The New York Times, February 15, 2002 – Michael Kimmelman

Customer Reviews

Absolutely Worthy
The text:
First, there is the 75 page introduction Storr has written, placing the work in historical perspective. Why a retrospective, why now? Following this is the history of Richter's development from student to backwater (non-American) Pop artist with extensive references to other influential artists and reproductions of their work. Storr goes often beyond Richter's statements to supply his (Storr's) own close reading of the paintings. He finds Richter hides behind humor or simple misreadings of the work in order to conceal emotional attachment to themes.

Following is a valuable 22 page interview conducted in 2001. Robert Storr is an absolutely worthy interrogator of the artist. Storr had a previous extensive interview with Richter in '96. The text in Forty Years builds significantly on the ground covered previously. The two men are so in tune to each other, I miss the almost taunting flavor of the interview found in "The Daily Practice of Painting" between Richter and Benjamin Buchloh. Every page of the interview contains surprises or important points regarding Twentieth century art. Often, Storr's well-formed questions run a good paragraph long with Richter responding quite briefly and not too predictably. One could read the interview in random pieces, as themes develop over a few rounds of questions then the subject is often changed.
There is also a chronology outlining significant events both in Richter's career & artistic production as well as outside events such as student demonstrations, the fall of the Berlin Wall, various marriages.

The reproductions: I knew I was holding quality when I saw the two different studio shots that grace the front & back inner covers. The scholarly introduction has a few pictures of work not in the MOMA exhibit. The plates are arranged basically in the order one would encounter them at MOMA. The 8 Students nurses are grouped (all 8 span just 2 pages) as are the 48 Portraits (spanning 11 pages). What the reproductions can't show is that "Kitchen Chair" "65 & "Barn" '84 are the representational works with as much surface action as the abstracts. And the Baader-Meinhof series has a 3-page foldout out to enjoy the Confrontation I, II & III. Several of the large abstractions are placed on 2-page spreads; this is necessary to see their surface.

What becomes apparent from this book is that Richter is dedicated to the humanistic (and retinal) tradition of the endeavor of painting; most significantly Richter is not at all threatened by new developments in contemporary art - rather he attempts to understand the latest developments and incorporate them into genuine expressions from his "daily practice".

A great artist thumbs his nose at high art
A lot of words been written lately about the �unexpected revival of painting� fueled by the current Gerhardt Richter painting retrospective captured in this book. It seems, according to some influential art scribes writing in the trail of this traveling exhibition, that the much heralded demise of painting, much like Mark Twain�s death, has been greatly exaggerated. Showcasing about 120 works over a 40-year period, this book is one of the most comprehensive retrospectives ever mounted about a contemporary painter in recent memory, and that by itself is a strong enough reason to buy it. However, it is what has been proven by Richter�s career and accomplishments, and unexpected stature in the art world (Sotheby�s recently dubbed him the �most influential living artist in the world�) and now driven home here, that makes this a-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn some lessons about the contemporary art world. You see, Richter doesn�t fit the formula for success that many art curators and influential critics and other art powers-that-be have carefully crafted in the rarified atmospheres of the upper crusts of the art world. In fact, Richter breaks every �rule� that often starts being pressed upon 18-year old art students and then is hammered home in reviews and lectures by many contemporary art critics and curators. Rules like �you better have your own recognizable style!� or �only new is good� and the oddest rule of all: �painting is dead!� But Richter is not only a painter in an era forced to focus on video artists, performance stars and PhotoShop wonders, but also Richter wanders from style to style with an ease and speed that makes this book a lesson on half a dozen art movements of the last century beautifully continued onto the current one. Thumb through the pages here and you�ll soon discover that Richter is as much as ease with photorealism � some ultra sharp and some foggy in detail -- as he is with pure abstraction and with romantic paintings of pretty clouds and scenic waterfalls. This is an artist who is not just happy with thumbing his nose at the well-enforced rule that a good artist has to have a clearly identifiable style and do something �new�, but who also seems intent on destroying the other forced formulas of the modern art world: he copies other artists� works, works directly from photographs, blah, blah, blah � all sins that would make all my art professors and most art critics sigh in disgust. But above all, Richter paints, and he paints in a time when painting has been dismissed as �ailing� and �ancient.� New is good, technology is good� painting is dead.� Why does Richter paint? Doesn�t he get it? NOPE!! It�s because it is all about painting! And managing to make fools of critics who forget that their job is to follow the artist � not to lead the arts. What those who consider painting an �ailing� form will never understand (mostly because they are not painters), is that Richter can�t and won�t stop painting, because through his veins runs the same intoxicating venom that fueled their ancestral kin in the caves of Altamira and which will continue to drive painters long after today�s critics and curators are forgotten dust. This book shouts: Art does not have to be �new� to be good, and technology is not the only venue to deliver great new contemporary art - it also continues to prove that painting will never die.

the unblinking blur
Behold, German painting! In a country whose artists tend to lay the paint on blut and thick, Richter is a notable contrast. He represents, along with Sigmar Polke, the best of a school of European painters who assimilated the American Pop Art scene. Don't expect the blazing cartoon colors of Lichtenstein though, Richter is a painter's painter, who has more depth and soul than Warhol ever could (surely by his own admission). But Richter's subject matter also comes from the mundane: a faded family snapshot, a clipping from a newspaper. Bits of emphemera blown up a hundred times and immortalized in oil paint. Clement Greenberg might abhore Richter's work more than the American Pop Artists: here is grand kitcsh by the hand of a master painter.
*note that I speak mostly of Richter's representative work, of which the book mostly focuses on. Also, the large Richter retrospective, having left N.Y., is still touring America for those interested