48 Gerhard Richter Grey (Grau) 2003 oil on canvas 20 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (52 x 47 cm) Signed, numbered and dated "Richter 2003 883-4" on the reverse. This work can be seen in the following video: September, A History Painting by Gerhard Richter Robert Storr, 2009
Provenance Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Private Collection, United States Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne Exhibited New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Gerhard Richter Paintings from 2003-2005, November 17, 2005 – January 14, 2006 Literature A. Zweite, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné for the Paintings 1993-2004, Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, New York: D.A.P Distributed Art Publishers, 2005, no. 883-4 (illustrated) Gerhard Richter Paintings from 2003-2005, exh. cat., Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2006, p. 37 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay "If I paint an abstract picture... I neither know in advance what it is supposed to look like nor where I intend to go when I am painting, what could be done, to what end." Gerhard Richter 1991 Throughout his half-century career, Gerhard Richter has often gone grey. His initial experiments with abstract monochromatic composition were an important milestone: he first began making them shortly after his acclaimed figurative series 48 Portraits was shown at the 1972 Venice Biennale, and they came before his distinctively vibrant 1980s period. The grey paintings are far more, however, than a conceptual blank slate or tabula rasa. Through his painting Richter aims to determine the future of paint as medium, and particularly its relationship to the challenge of photography. His works strongly resist the idea of a picture as having a “subject,” even in the most abstracted sense: as Richter’s friend and critic Dietmar Elger has noted, “it is precisely in this stripping away of artistry that the painterly qualities achieve a lasting effect.” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter A Life in Painting, Cologne 2002, p. 209). The grey works form perhaps the purest expression of Richter’s unique and vastly influential investigation into the nature of painting, and offer an insight into his most piercing of questions – “how painting could be made without treating colour as a compositional element, and how the practice of painting could continue without subjective content.” (M. Godfrey, “Damaged Landscapes”, Gerhard Richter Panorama, p. 86) Closely related to a series of works depicting the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the present lot – in its silhouette of a rising tower under a veil of variegated and ghostly greys – Richter visually captures the impossibility of verbally describing the most consequential occurrence in recent world history. Depicting the explosion of United Airlines Flight 175 as it hit the South Tower, the painting, embodies a powerful sense of the enormity and significance of the event; through his thoughtful and unrivaled treatment, Richter evokes an existential numbness, sadness and incomprehension. Described by critic Bryan Appleyard for The Sunday Times as "the closest you will get to a great 9/11 work" he goes on to assert that "It reclaims the day, leaving it exactly where it was, exactly when it happened." (Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, Culture, 28.08.11, p.11.) The present lot was executed through Richter’s famed squeegee method, in which layers of oil paint are scraped across the canvas using a section of flexible Perspex attached to a wooden handle. Existing wet layers of paint are disturbed as new layers are applied, creating a distinctive and unpredictable blur. One of Richter’s most recognisable motifs, the technique has been used in a wide variety of ways, from overpainting photorealist works with rifts of distortion to creating huge, multivalent and deeply textural abstract pieces. This mature work shows the artist working with consummate clarity of purpose. Here, the introduction of paler tone to the left of the painting imparts a zinc-like sheen. What may appear at a distance to be a rather plain surface reveals subtle variations in texture on closer inspection, with soft blooms of light and shade reminiscent of some of Richter’s cloud paintings, and an underlayer of dark paint making harsher incursions. There is an absence
48 Gerhard Richter Grey (Grau) 2003 oil on canvas 20 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (52 x 47 cm) Signed, numbered and dated "Richter 2003 883-4" on the reverse. This work can be seen in the following video: September, A History Painting by Gerhard Richter Robert Storr, 2009
Provenance Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Private Collection, United States Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne Exhibited New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Gerhard Richter Paintings from 2003-2005, November 17, 2005 – January 14, 2006 Literature A. Zweite, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné for the Paintings 1993-2004, Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, New York: D.A.P Distributed Art Publishers, 2005, no. 883-4 (illustrated) Gerhard Richter Paintings from 2003-2005, exh. cat., Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2006, p. 37 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay "If I paint an abstract picture... I neither know in advance what it is supposed to look like nor where I intend to go when I am painting, what could be done, to what end." Gerhard Richter 1991 Throughout his half-century career, Gerhard Richter has often gone grey. His initial experiments with abstract monochromatic composition were an important milestone: he first began making them shortly after his acclaimed figurative series 48 Portraits was shown at the 1972 Venice Biennale, and they came before his distinctively vibrant 1980s period. The grey paintings are far more, however, than a conceptual blank slate or tabula rasa. Through his painting Richter aims to determine the future of paint as medium, and particularly its relationship to the challenge of photography. His works strongly resist the idea of a picture as having a “subject,” even in the most abstracted sense: as Richter’s friend and critic Dietmar Elger has noted, “it is precisely in this stripping away of artistry that the painterly qualities achieve a lasting effect.” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter A Life in Painting, Cologne 2002, p. 209). The grey works form perhaps the purest expression of Richter’s unique and vastly influential investigation into the nature of painting, and offer an insight into his most piercing of questions – “how painting could be made without treating colour as a compositional element, and how the practice of painting could continue without subjective content.” (M. Godfrey, “Damaged Landscapes”, Gerhard Richter Panorama, p. 86) Closely related to a series of works depicting the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the present lot – in its silhouette of a rising tower under a veil of variegated and ghostly greys – Richter visually captures the impossibility of verbally describing the most consequential occurrence in recent world history. Depicting the explosion of United Airlines Flight 175 as it hit the South Tower, the painting, embodies a powerful sense of the enormity and significance of the event; through his thoughtful and unrivaled treatment, Richter evokes an existential numbness, sadness and incomprehension. Described by critic Bryan Appleyard for The Sunday Times as "the closest you will get to a great 9/11 work" he goes on to assert that "It reclaims the day, leaving it exactly where it was, exactly when it happened." (Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, Culture, 28.08.11, p.11.) The present lot was executed through Richter’s famed squeegee method, in which layers of oil paint are scraped across the canvas using a section of flexible Perspex attached to a wooden handle. Existing wet layers of paint are disturbed as new layers are applied, creating a distinctive and unpredictable blur. One of Richter’s most recognisable motifs, the technique has been used in a wide variety of ways, from overpainting photorealist works with rifts of distortion to creating huge, multivalent and deeply textural abstract pieces. This mature work shows the artist working with consummate clarity of purpose. Here, the introduction of paler tone to the left of the painting imparts a zinc-like sheen. What may appear at a distance to be a rather plain surface reveals subtle variations in texture on closer inspection, with soft blooms of light and shade reminiscent of some of Richter’s cloud paintings, and an underlayer of dark paint making harsher incursions. There is an absence
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