Gehard Richter in conversation with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh // 1986

Painting

(Documents of Contemporary art, Whitechapel Gallery, Excerpt 9 Pg 58)

This conversation is interesting on a number of levels. In terms of his work, or the way he works, which are very interesting, it gives little away. The reason I like it so much is because clearly him and the interviewer butt heads a lot in terms of their thinking and considerations about art. It is the way he sticks up for himself and doesn’t give in that I find almost gripping about this, and the reason I have decided to include it within my research. When exploring new ideas and experimenting beyond what others consider to be normal, you can be met with a front of confusion and hatred out of naivety and arrogance, and so Richter is a wonderful example of someone who feels and sticks up for his craft.

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh “What about the objectivization of the process of painting itself? You paint your big pictures not with an artist's brush but with the decorator’s brush: isn't this all part of the anonymization and objectification of the painting process, along with the permutation and ' chance', colour relations and compositional organisation?”

Gehard Richter “Certainly not”

BB” The change in the instruments of production doesn't imply that the production of painting is once more critically called in question?”

GR “It changes the picture only in one respect: they get louder, they are not so easily overlooked.”

BB “I was talking about the instruments – that is, the instruments also influence the perception of the picture. The fact that a monochrome was painted with a roller decisively influences the perception of the work. And in these big paintings here, weather brush strokes suddenly turn into a decorator's brush marks, they take on a new dimension that I would describe as a quasi-mechanical or anonymous quality”

GR “no, not in this case. Are brushes a brush, whether it's 5 millimetres wide or 50CM.”

Taking material properties into account, certainly using a range of materials and processes can drastically change how someone may view a piece of work, and in this example, seems to has dramatically altered how Buchloh views Richter’s work. I think that suggesting that a perception of a work is created by the ‘standard’, price or ‘class’ of the materials used is narrow minded, and suggests that somehow fine art painting is above any other form of painting or art. It is the opposite of what Phyllida Barlow or Angela De La Cruz would suggest, and in this instance I definitely side with Richter.

BB “Spectacular they certainly are, even in small format. In my catalogue text, I tried to describe how your abstract painting the system is always ‘on show’, as it were - that they always have a certain declaratory, rhetorical quality. One always gets the feeling that you're showing the various possibilities just as possibilities, so that they simply stand alongside or against each other, without performing any other function.”

GR “Like making a speech that doesn't mean anything?”

BB “Yes – “

GR “A speech full of eloquence and uplift, which everyone falls for because it sounds good, which fulfils all the formal requirements of a speech and actually communicate nothing?”

BB “It doesn't sound good if you describe it that way, but you could put it differently, by saying that someone is delivering a powerfully emotive speech in order to give an analytical presentation of the resources of language, emotive persuasion and rhetoric. That is, you are making the spectacle of painting visible in its rhetoric without practising it.”

This interaction drew my attention because Buchloh is making it blatantly clear that he feels Richter’s work is empty, painting for the sake of painting, materialistically interesting but hollow in thought and meaning. I think that, one the one hand, this is not only harsh, but also false and accusatory for no reason. As with Katharina Grosse’s work, painting can be enjoyable because of the process and because paint is a pleasure to work with, and to suggest that any artist is creating work other than for the sake of it is absurd because of course, being an artist is about materiality and enjoyment/expression. Following this was another relatively painful conversation about matter. Richter talks about the methodology behind his paintings and Buchloh completely destroys him. He, like with me, is interested in music and expression, and while I recognise that perhaps this is a very old trope often used within artwork, it is effective:

GR “They have a perfectly normal kind of seriousness. I can't put a name to this, so I always see them as musical. And in the structure there's a lot that reminds me of music. It's self evident to me, but impossible to explain.”

BB “That's one of the oldest cliches that people resort to, when they are trying to find a firm footing amid the desolation of abstract painting.”

GR “That may well be. But I mentioned music in order to argue against something.”

Following this, they once again butt ideas about the ‘meaning’ or ideas behind the work, which as a conversation I find inherently interesting. It is very powerful hoe Richter manages to stand up for himself, and I am impressed at his strength against Buchloh. I think he is against abstract painting in almost every form, which is interesting, and I think that the visual capabilities of Richter’s paintings speak for themselves.

GR “It sets up moods.”

BB “That was the hard thing to figure out – whether it did, and, if so, what moods – when I said that the paintings curiously enough evoke no associations.”

GR “They do set up associations. They remind you of natural experiences, even rain if you like. These paintings can't help functioning that way. That's where they get their effect from, the fact that they incessantly remind you of nature, and so they're almost naturalistic anyhow.”

BB “But of course that then has to be defined. Not naturalistic in relation to nature?”

GR “Only in relation to nature, that's all we have.”

BB “The fact that nature appears to you as the only analogy or model that is ordered without a hierarchal structure – that you can't visualise a utopian construct of a society that would match this ideal of nature – that is the romantic element in your thinking.”

GR “That's not the romantic element. It has to do with the division of Labour. Some people design model societies, some design paintings. Each to the best of his ability.”

BB “That's not a direct answer to my question: why nature to you is the only utopian dimension of non-hierarchal experience, why it is unthinkable for you to argue or discuss your idea of a non-hierarchal existence in social terms, while you can only fall back on the metaphor of nature, like a romantic.”

GR “No. Like a painter. And I don't argue in social terms, because I want to make a picture and not an ideology. And what is good about a picture is never ideological but always factual.”

I am utterly fascinated by this excerpt of conversation and the strength of offence Buchloh leads with. I think that Richter is right about his own work, and to try and tear down someone’s own thinking is an interesting exercise but one I do not condone in this scenario. The way he is able to articulate his ideas about his abstract work is interesting enough, and I commend him.

Research

Confirm copying