- Gerhard Richter ‘Interview With Rolf Schön’ (1972) The Daily Practice Of Painting: Writings 1962–1993 (ed. Hans-Ulrich Obrist) Thames and Hudson and Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, 1995, p 73.
- Clement Greenberg ‘Modernist Painting’ Art In Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology Of Changing Ideas (eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood) Blackwell, Oxford, 1992.
- Benjamin Buchloh's numerous publications on Richter typically include this argument. See, for example ‘The Allegories Of Painting’ Gerhard Richter (ed. Martha Buskirk) Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 1993; Gerhard Richter: Painting After The Subject Of History PhD Dissertation, City University of New York, 1994; ‘Interview With Gerhard Richter’ Gerhard Richter: Paintings (ed. T.A. Neff) Thames and Hudson, London, 1988; and ‘Ready-Made, Photography And Painting In The Painting Of Gerhard Richter’, ‘Photography And Painting’ and ‘The Painting Of Painting’ Gerhard Richter: Abstract Paintings Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1979.
- Other examples of this expansion of painting include artists such as Francis Alys and Paul McCarthy, who both produce performance works yet are routinely referred to as painters. As Morgan Falconer writes: ‘Side by side with the notion of painting's expansion has been the idea that it is a mode of thought, rather than simply a medium of art practice.’ Morgan Falconer ‘The Undead’ Art Monthly October 2003, p4.
- Although these are all contemporary examples, it could be argued that similar dialogues around questions of medium began as early as the 1970s. At this time, many artists took up the materiality of photography—that is, its status as object—to such an extent as to produce sculptural works. An exhibition addressing this theme, Photography Into Sculpture, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1970.
- Diverse writers such as Geoffrey Batchen, Rosalind Krauss and Fred Ritchin refer to ‘post-photography’. See Geoffrey Batchen Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001; Susan Fereday and Stuart Koop Post: Photography Post Photography Centre for Contemporary Photography, Sydney, 1995; Rosalind Krauss ‘Reinventing The Medium: Art And Photography’ Critical Inquiry Vol. 25, No. 2, Winter 1999; Fred Ritchin ‘The End Of Photography As We Have Known It’ Photo Video: Photography In The Age Of The Computer (ed. Paul Wombell) Rivers Oram Press, London, 1991.
- Geoff Batchen, op cit, p109.
- Clement Greenberg ‘Modernist Painting’ op cit, p 755.
- Clement Greenberg ‘Avant-Garde And Kitsch’ (1939) Art In Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology Of Changing Ideas (eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood) Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p 532.
- Michael Fried Absorption And Theatricality: Painting And Beholder In The Age Of Diderot University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988.
- Though a number of writers have identified aspects of Richter's oeuvre according to the Duchampian readymade. These include: Stefan Germer ‘Retrospective Ahead’ Gerhard Richter (ed. S. Rainbird and T. Severne) Tate Gallery, London, 1991; Peter Osborne ‘Painting Negation: Gerhard Richter's Negatives’ October 62 1992; Mark Cheetham ‘Mirror Digressions: Narcissus And The Readymade Monochrome’ Slippage: Gerhard Richter, Lucio Fontana, Taras Polataiko (ed. Lisa Baldissera) Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Canada, 2001.
- Rosalind Krauss ‘Reinventing The Medium’ op cit, p 305.
- Rosalind Krauss A Voyage On The North Sea: Art In The Age Of The Post-Medium Condition Thames and Hudson, New York, 1999, p7.
- A productive connection between Krauss's conception of medium according to difference and use can be made with a similar argument from Michel Foucault. In describing Gerard Fromanger's ‘photogenic paintings’ Foucault refers to the necessary play between medium and disguised difference. Krauss's notion of differential specificity still assumes that medium is apparent even if as a relation. However, Foucault's notion of disguised difference, of an identity that is inviolable but which can nevertheless be feigned, brings us a step closer to painters taking on photography, photographers who produce the appearance of painting, and photographers who allude to photography as image in such a way as to stand outside their own medium. I make this argument in my PhD thesis Blur: Gerhard Richter And The Photographic In Painting University of Queensland, Brisbane, 2007. Foucault's discussion is found in Michel Foucault ‘Photogenic Painting’ Photogenic Painting: Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Gerard Fromanger (ed. Sarah Wilson) Black Dog, London, 1999.
- Jacques Derrida ‘Des Tours De Babel’ Difference In Translation (ed. Joseph F. Graham) Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1985, p170.
- Ibid, p192.
- Ibid, p7.
- Gerhard Richter ‘Interview With Rolf Schön’ op cit, p73.
- Gerhard Richter ‘Notes, 1964’ The Daily Practice Of Painting op cit, p23.
- Rosalind Krauss A Voyage On The North Sea op cit.
- Jacques Derrida ‘Des Tours De Babel’ op cit, p201.
- This is an easy supposition when so many references to ‘the photographic’ do not refer to the medium of photography as such but rather to its properties as found elsewhere. For examples see James Elkins ‘What Do We Want Photography To Be?: A Response To Michael Fried’ Critical Inquiry Vol. 31, No. 4, 2005; and Michael Fried ‘Barthes’ Punctum’ Critical Inquiry Vol. 31, No. 3, 2005.
- Barthes describes this effect across a number of publications and as located in literature, historical texts, diaries and photography. See, in particular, Roland Barthes ‘Historical Discourse’ Structuralism: A Reader (ed. Michael Lane) Jonathan Cape, London, 1970.
- In English publications these paintings are commonly referred to as ‘photopaintings’. Richter also calls them ‘photo pictures’. Ironically, given the discussion of idiom and the untranslatable that underlies my discussion, this variation in nomenclature is largely attributable to the ambiguities of translation. Richter labels his work ‘Bild’ in German. In English, this is translated as ‘picture’ as opposed to ‘painting’. In German, as in English, although there is a separate word for painting—‘Malerie’—‘Bild’, like ‘picture’, is able to refer to any sort of image, a painting, or a photograph or a drawing, and so on. ‘Bild’ is therefore able to designate Richter's work as constituted in all three visual forms at once. In English, it is unusual to hear a painter refer to her works as ‘pictures’ rather than as ‘paintings’. As ‘Bild’, Richter does not designate his works as belonging to any one category of image-making, instead insisting that they are of a more general encompassing category of ‘picture’. It is as if, in German, the ‘photo picture’ is already linguistically predetermined as a complex image form that questions both specificity and generality in art.
- Here, blur can include many things: diffuse form, smeared and scrubbed paint, un-delineated surface or formless blotch. All share the fact that they cannot be accounted for by familiar categories of representation, imitation or figuration.
- This comparison of artists according to their use of various blurring strategies is not made in order to demonstrate relationships of influence (though some historians have done just that) or to present a history that explains how the blur has evolved as a representational strategy. Instead, I simply aim to point out the history of such strategies before the example of Richter and their similarity in disrupting the visual organisation of the image.
- Georges Didi-Huberman Fra Angelico: Dissemblance And Figuration (trans. Jane Marie Todd) University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995, p9.
- It should be noted, though, that the concept of figuration is contested across art history. Georges Didi- Huberman provides an apposite account of what is at stake in such debates in his writing on Fra Angelico. See ibid.
- This entailment of possibility and impossibility is entirely consistent with Richter's oft-repeated hope and faith in painting followed by his despair at its failures. These are prominent themes in Richter's notes and interviews. See, for example The Daily Practice Of Painting op cit.
- Related examples of this technique based on other reproductive supports include Kassel (1992, oil on offset print) and Hood (1996, offset print). Both works were included in Gerhard Richter: Survey Exhibition (Arken Museum, Ishöj, Denmark; Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart; 2001).
- Gerhard Richter ‘Interview With Jonas Storsve’ (1991) The Daily Practice Of Painting op cit, p227.
- Dietmar Elger ‘Epilogue’ Gerhard Richter: Florence (ed. Dietmar Elger) Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2001, np.
- Ibid.
- The status of the photograph as document and index is underscored in some of these works by the snapshot including the date the photograph was taken.
- The ability of the partially obliterated photograph to assert itself in this way is particularly evident in a series of overpaintings entitled 4. Jan.–15. Jan. 2000 (2000). These 12 overpaintings are based on snapshots of a new-born baby.
- ‘Occluded’ seems particularly useful here, as the paint actually blocks the photograph, preventing its communication to the eye.
- Jean-Philippe Antoine describes these paintings as demonstrating the essential and inevitable link between landscape and abstraction as well as highlighting the ‘organic’ ties between the abstract pictures and photography: ‘the screen-like nature of the surface of the abstract paintings is disclosed with no trace of ambiguity… If landscape was an obligatory stage in the search for abstraction—if within what can be pictured or “figured” it is what sends us back, with no allegorical recourse, to that which cannot, the “unfigurable”—it doubtless is also the figure which comes forth, refusing to cede to “nothing”, when the gaze falls on the screen of the painting, even though one has ceased representing anything at all there, to instead distribute, semi-chaotically throughout it, traces of color.’ Jean-Philippe Antoine ‘Photography, Painting And The Real: The Question Of Landscape In The Painting Of Gerhard Richter’ Gerhard Richter (ed. Jacinto Lageira) Éditions Dis Voir, Paris, 1995, pp 88–9.
- Gerhard Richter ‘Notes 1964–65’ The Daily Practice Of Painting op cit, p37.
- Michael Fried Painting Present lecture, Tate Modern, London, 15 October 2003. www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/webcasts/painting_present/michael_fried/default.jsp
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art
Volume 8, 2007 - Issue 1: Post-Medium