MoMA’s brochure says the question of whether a painter who veers back and forth between abstraction and realism can be taken seriously is precisely the point of Richter’s work: “[He] has challenged painting to meet the demands posed by new forms of conceptual art.” Conceptual artists–those playful art-world intellects from Marcel Duchamp right up through any number of tyros just out of art school yesterday–think that visual style is a fool’s game, a relic of the days when art in museums was confined to brownish old paintings and sculptures. They think that consistency of style is even worse–part of an indulgent myth about overwrought artists (say, van Gogh or Pollock) who supposedly just can’t help painting the way they do. Richter’s supporters say that his bouncing back and forth between gooey abstraction and fussy photorealism is proof that painting can play the conceptual game, too.
Richter was born in Dresden. His father was in the Wehrmacht, and so was his uncle Rudi, the subject of one of Richter’s early, fuzzily existential black-and-white portraits. (The effect comes from the artist’s technique of horizontally whisking the still-wet paint with a soft brush.) Richter was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, but by the time he was 15, World War II was over and he was attending trade school. At 20, Richter was admitted to Dresden’s Art Academy. Within a few years he was making political banners for the East German government. From there, Richter made his way into mural painting, which, considered a mere “decorative” art by the communist authorities, gave him sufficient freedom to travel to West Germany. Just before the Berlin wall went up in 1961, he moved there.
The best of Richter’s monochrome figurative paintings do pack a bit of a punch. There’s something truly spooky about the combination of his fuzzing gimmick and his banal subjects (ugly office buildings, nondescript folks on the street). Richter’s abstractions are another matter. Abstract painting usually carries at least some presumption of sincerity. The conceptualist idea that fooling around with abstraction is groovily enigmatic when you also do photorealism may work well in theory, but not in this exhibition. Even the three huge 1989 abstractions (“November,” “December” and “January”), clearly intended as showstoppers, come off more bombastic than breathtaking.
Richter’s work alludes to an even larger issue, however, than one painter’s having multiple styles. It’s about the impossibility of really seeing. The longer you look at Richter’s figurative work, the more the subject evaporates. This suggests, in turn, the impossibility of really knowing anything–especially the culpability of such characters as Uncle Rudi. Richter’s artistic solution is to hold back, to forgo a signature style because–I’ll go out on a limb here–a passionately pursued single painting style contains faint, but nevertheless uncomfortable, overtones of torchlight parades, Teutonic gods and the dangerous politics of hatred and hysteria. Best, then, to hold back. Best not to be sincere. Best to be a conceptual artist… which is a terrible price for a painter to pay for absolution.
Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of PaintingMuseum of Modern Art, New York Through May 21
Photo: Both sides Now: Richter’s squeegeed 1992 “Abstract Picture’ (left), “Uncle Rudi’ (1965) in his Army uniform
