Tag Archives: Gerhard Richter

The Price of Greatness

Readers of this blog will know that I am a great admirer of the work of Frank Stella. It seems I’m in a minority. I was talking to a friend who calls him the Leroy Neiman of contemporary art, and … Continue reading

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The Series

In my view, Richter’s important contributions to abstraction have been the color charts and something that I call “the edition of unique works.” The latter might be the most important, and I have talked about it on this blog. But … Continue reading

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Noise

Following from the previous post, as an example of visual noise I would like to present any abstract work by Gerhard Richter. Pictures like this are the high class, supremely tasteful equivalent of stadium rock, a sclerotic form if there … Continue reading

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Critique as mourning

Benjamin Buchloh’s very consistent position, influential in the art world for decades,  reads today as a lament for the lost values of European humanism. That may sound absurd at first, but it becomes more clear as one realizes that his … Continue reading

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Pompiers and Firetenders

After pondering the problem for a while I think I understand what Benjamin Buchloh means when he describes Frank Stella’s work as “myth.” If an artist makes coloristic and formal choices, if they work with their materials through both their … Continue reading

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Artists and Academics

With misgivings I temporarily swerve away from the formal discussion of Stella’s Moby Dick series to an art world perspective. Benjamin Buchloh recounts that Gerhard Richter intervened to help scuttle Stella’s proposal for a museum in Dresden, Richter’s home town. … Continue reading

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So far

This blog is getting complex, and though I’m glad to be getting comments on older posts I’m also afraid that some good moments will be lost because of the very nature of a blog, which is that it is always … Continue reading

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Between Richter and Motherwell

To make his “Lyric Suite,” named after a composition by Alban Berg, Motherwell put on the record and started to paint, with ink and various kinds of colors, on small pieces of Japanese paper. The feeling of rightness in the … Continue reading

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Richter’s editions

I’m critical of Richter for his achievement of generalized effects, but I have to admit that when he deliberately foregrounds the generic, in other words when he is a bit more of a conceptualist, he has made some very strong … Continue reading

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Non-conceptual

I’m aware that the previous post did not correctly describe how Byron Kim makes his work, and I also know that he makes other kinds. The resemblance of his carefully painted monochromes to paint chips is in this viewer’s eyes, … Continue reading

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