Gerhard Richter in London Town by Karen Wright

by pmaxwell, 24 September 2008

Gerhard Richter, 4900 Colors: Version II, 2008

I am meeting an artistic legend. Gerhard Richter is one of the most acknowledged masters of the 20th century. Artists are usually identifiable by some quirk or other. A colorful sock, a flash of a handkerchief or even some specially paint-splashed pair of trousers. Richter appears at the Serpentine Gallery in London with none of the above. He looks like a continental businessman in simple trousers, blue shirt and dark sports jacket with white hair and glasses. He becomes every inch the artist during the somewhat chaotic press conference that follows his appearance. The problem is, he thinks that he needs an interpreter, and this means that everything has to be funneled through an affable young man. The audience, which includes many German-speaking writers, has no patience for either the interpreter or the softly spoken Richter.

The reason we are here is to look at Richter's new show “4900 Colors: Version II,” its "constellation arranged specially for London." The reality is that this a show, which premiered in Cologne in the Ludwig, which is particularly appropriate as it is a stones throw literally from the cathedral in which Richter recently installed his stained glass windows. Richter tells us when he received the commission to replace the stained glass that had been destroyed during the war, he could not think about doing a figurative work. "It was not right for me, that is not to say that other artists like Gilbert and George could have done figurative work." When someone questions him about his Christianity he admits that he is not a believer, but does not disrespect those who are. "Good art aspires to something higher than 'mere' painting" he says, "painting aspires to something spiritual".

Surrounded by the colorful panels, he explains that these works, as well as the windows in Cologne, are the results of a discovery of an old faded print of a painting he himself did in the 1970s of colored squares; part of the color chart series. These had been based he says on, "paint charts in shops," and there was little artistic intervention. In the new works he chose 25 colors, and a computer program was devised which then selected the colors assigning them positions in rows. Each time a color was chosen, an assistant spray-painted enamel or, "lacquer or house paint," as he said to me, onto an aluminum square. The computer then chose another, reallocating the previously selected color backs into the hopper. The resulting panels of juxtaposed color illustrate that the juxtapositions allow an infinite variety of hues. I try counting the various colors, attempting to get to 25 but constantly lose my way in hue and shade.

Gerhard Richter, 4900 Colors: Version II, 2008

The panels were then assigned in 11 possible permutations; the first shown in Cologne was where all the panels were put into one huge panel. The height of seven meters was not possible in the Serpentine so an alternative dispersal was considered, and the decision was to make 48 equal sized panels, each of four small panels to be uniformly spaced around the galleries. The positions and juxtapositions were chosen by a Serpentine curator who was forced to make the decision randomly in order to prevent her from making artistic decisions. She chose to shuffle the panel depictions on paper like a pack of cards and then throw dice to determine which four should be together and which way up they should go.

The questions from the audience to Richter are strangely bland and irrelevant. Does Richter think that Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst and the cult of the celebrity are interesting, and does he feel the need to be a celebrity? He shrugs and says "I don't know whether artists should be personalities or not". When I ask whether Albers or Cage is more important to him he answers only that Albers is not interesting to him. He will not engage with questions of Cage who obviously is seminal to the work. When someone asks whether he will continue with these works, he responds simply "he does not feel the need to go on with squares.” He says he does not see a distinction between conceptual art and painting and is irritated by questions trying to elicit this distinction. He finally almost snaps, "painting is still dead, but here it is not dead".

Recently I listened to a long discussion on how to judge an artist's importance. The esteemed curators said it was whether or not the artist's work was relevant to younger artists. If this is the criterion then Richter seems like a colossus. Walking around the Hirst installation at Sotheby's recently, one can determine that much of his painting works come straight out of the Richter rulebook. Spots and spins embrace the randomness of the conceptual rulebook, and hyper real could have come straight out of the earlier Richter paintings based on news stories. Was Richter looking at the Hirst butterfly panels when he came back to stained glass?


Gerhard Richter, 4900 Colors: Version II, 2008

Back to the Serpentine, where we are surrounded by the equivalent of stained glass windows that have much more beauty and purity than the Hirst windows. The shininess of the paint means that it is impossible to view them without the reflection of oneself glinting back, reminding me of my recent walk through Gary Hume's “Door” paintings. There is a depersonalization about the works that, because of their system, are strangely removed from what we know about painting. It is as if John Baldessari words are playing in my ears, "Artistic decisions should not necessarily be made by artists," and the, “Aesthetic will take care of itself," and of course it does. In Richter's words, "This is a secular vision of religious experience," and in the beautiful setting of the Serpentine Gallery on a day of an Indian summer one can see exactly what Richter means. Then the spell is broken and Juergen Teller steps up to take the main man's photograph.

Gerhard Richter’s “4900 Colours: Version II” continues at the Serpentine Gallery until November 16th, 2008