Friday, September 21, 2012

Gerhard Richter, Painting 2012 @Goodman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 monumental color works, 10 smaller color works, and 1 glass/steel sculpture, displayed in the north and south galleries and in the smaller north viewing room. The large scale works are digital prints, unframed and mounted between Aludibond and Perspex (Diasec), made in 2011 and 2012. The works range in size from 63x118 to 79x236, in both square and rectangular formats, and are each unique (edition of 1). The smaller works are also digital prints, but mounted on Aludibond and framed in blond wood and matted. All of these works are sized 20x56 and were made in 2012; they are also unique (edition of 1). The sculpture in the south gallery is made of 6 panes of glass and a steel frame, from 2002-2011. A catalog of the exhibit is available from the gallery for $65. A second book detailing the intermediate steps leading up to the finished works on display (called Patterns) is available for review at the reception desk. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: When we look back on the history of digital art in a decade or two, I think that the works in this show, namely Gerhard Richter's recent strip paintings, will be seen as a watershed moment. They represent the defining instant when software-driven art making went mainstream, when one of our most important and influential painters made the drastic jump and fully embraced a new kind of artistic thinking. To be sure, plenty of artists have been using all kinds of digital technologies in recent years, but this show really represents a break with the past, and a huge, bold step toward the future. Richter has brought triumphant excitement and extroverted vitality to the digital realm, so it's no wonder these pictures have been misunderstood by most of the old thinkers; they're evidence that we're on our way to somewhere entirely new.
 
I think it is a fair question to ask why a photography critic like myself is weighing in on works that are being called "paintings". The fact is that these works reside in the Venn diagram intersection of painting, photography, and software driven art, and their endpoint is a digital photographic print. Richter's process began with a high resolution scan (AKA a photograph) of one of his densely colored squeegee paintings (Abstract Painting 724-4, from 1990). This digital file was then vertically divided in an exponential progression (2, then 4, then 8, all the way to 4096), creating a multitude of sliver thin strips of color, which were each mirrored and repeated horizontally (by the software), effectively stretching the colors out into extended lines. Output as digital prints and mounted, these files became the "strip paintings". So let's be honest. These aren't even remotely "paintings" as we traditionally define them, even if that is a better term to use when trying to sell them for a big price. There is no hand crafting, no gesture, no mark of the artist whatsoever. They are manipulated photographs.
 
Let's also be clear that Richter and his team aren't a bunch of genius coders. The software required to do this image fracturing, mirroring, and reassembling was likely quite straightforward; plenty of competent software engineers could have cranked it out. But the simplicity of the software isn't really my point. What's important here is that Richter has taken his interest in structure and embodied it in something invisible, namely the underlying software. He's merged many of his previous ideas about abstraction, chance, compositional rigor, and photographic reproduction into a conceptual architecture built in code. Information has been translated into visual output in a modular, iterative, quantified fashion. In one swift move, he has displaced the physicality (the "thing"ness) of painting with pure, unadulterated, rational logic.
 
It is really impossible to comrehend the presence of these works from gallery installation shots or computer screen reproductions. At every distance, from 20 feet to 6 inches, they shimmer with an optical intensity that seems unprocessable by the human eye. The effect is that they are somehow hard to see and utterly precise at the same time. This isn't some gimmicky Op Art trickery, intentionally designed to make our eyes blur or swim; no, I think this feeling is entirely a byproduct of the minute resolution of the lines and the nature of the color. Richter has long been interested in color, and these pictures introduce nothing less than a revolution in color. Walk back through the history of painting and you'll find realistic color, Impressionistic color, painterly color, and more recently industrial color and even commercial color. These works take color somewhere new, call it technological or electronic color, where Richter has moved beyond the mechanistic to the hard edged intellectualism of computerized purity. The way light interacts with this color is altogether original, and can only really be understood when seen close up.
 
If we talk about Constructivism being rooted in the clarity of underlying geometry, perhaps what Richter is exploring here is a kind of Digital Constructivism, a 21st century version which replaces the idolization of the geometric form with the raw power of smart software. There is an undeniable connection between the shimmering electricity of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie and the staggering sensations of these new Richters; we're just a century further along in our refinement of the organizing principles and the brightness of the possibilities. Similarly, these strips extend far beyond pared down Minimalism, even though they are all horizontal lines; put one of these next to an elegant Agnes Martin and it will shout it down - its vibrating energy is just too great. The mathematical aesthetic has been taken to its logical extreme in these images, and that extreme points toward high density, high complexity innovation.
 
My guess is that when we stand in the future and look back at these Richters, they may look surprisingly simplistic from that wiser vantage point; in the coming years, artists are going to use software technology to move far beyond what's on display here. But there is something undeniably exciting about photographs (yes, photographs) that demolish so many barriers, that open up so much thrilling, unexplored white space. The 80 year old Richter has shown us what the bridge to the new world looks like; now we just have to walk across.
 
Collector's POV: The monumental scale works in this show were priced starting at 1300000€ and the smaller prints were priced at 20000€. I say "were" in that all of the works were either already sold or on hold when I visited the gallery. Richter's photographic works (the overpainted photographs as well as other works that might be categorized as photography) are intermittently available in the secondary markets, mostly in Contemporary Art auctions rather that Photography auctions. Recent prices for these works have ranged from roughly $10000 to $200000; Richter's paintings price at an altogether different and meaningfully higher level.

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Exhibit: Centre Pompidou, 2012 (here)
  • Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here), NY Times (here)
Gerhard Richter, Painting 2012
Through October 13th

Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

10 comments:

Adam said...

I should preface this by stating I'm a huge Richer fan and respect his work enormously. I'm also a fan of DLK – you're reviews are always insightful and interesting. Thanks.

I have not seen the show, which perhaps disqualifies my statements or requires they be taken with a grain of salt, but this work is really a simple Photoshop action. Take a single pixel slice of an image (either vertical or horizontal) and fill a canvas. As a PS trick, it is a bit tired and shockingly easy. I realize that is not the point and it fits with Richter's work and interests etc... I just don't think it is a watershed moment, nor is it very original. Perhaps if it had been done 15 years ago, but not now. To me it looks like bad PS filter art that seems impressive, but ultimately falls flat. I still want to see the work and perhaps will change my mind, but I expect more from Richter.

I should also add that Cory Arcangel also did a piece dissecting the movie 'Colors' into a continuously evolving band of colors. Arcangel created a software program took each frame of the movie for its entire length and essentially made a similar strip image. The piece then runs in a loop. It was recently shown at PS1.

Pete McGovern said...

I'm a fan of some of Richter's work and would deffo go see these (and drag people along)if and when they make it to the UK - primarily based on the impassioned insistence of the DLK reviewer! They must have looked sensational.

As digital photographic prints the fact that they are unique editions of just one is interesting, but as suggested in the review, it may be with regard to them being classed as paintings. Photo editions would be usually more than just one!

Very valid points, too by Adam in his comment, I thought.

DLK reviews are always a must-read and there's plenty to think about here, that's for sure.

Kim Kassay said...

2 stars max!

Christopher Dawson said...

Adam's mention of 'Colors'reminded me of this work by German artist Dennis Neuschaefer-Rube. He extracts 24 images per second from a full length feature film, then lines up all the images in strips.

http://www.neuschaefer-rube.de/index.php?/ongoing/stilled-films/

Max Telles said...

Cory Arcangel does it better! This is all bs based on an EPIC career. Richter is a genius, but this is just indulgent pseudo-intellectual silliness. Makes me of that wannabe Jonathan Lewis and his ''candy'' series. Just curious, how do you remain objective when you go in to see a show by an artist who is so influential and important?? How do you know what you're feeling isn't influenced and already decided for you by his gigantic reputation?

Anonymous said...

Nice wallpaper, Gerhard Richter. Max, I hate to say, has a point.

dirtywretch said...

I hate the fact that anything that comes from a digital printer is called a "photographic" print as well as calling scans, "photographs". Hopefully we'll learn to leave that nomenclature behind at some point the same way that we quit calling machine copies "xeroxes" or for those using copy machines to make artwork back in the 80's "xerox art".
As I look these new works of Richter's I flash to Max Von Sydow in the film Hannah and Her Sisters except this time when the rock stars asks for an artwork in a color to match his couch, Richter hits the purple button and zzzzzzzt! Out comes a print to match the couch.

Jonathan Lewis said...

Ha ha this is funny. Well this is the 'wannabe' and how about 11 years ago,Adam?:
http://www.jgdlewis.com/See%20Candy%20Page.htm
I had even planned to work on a similarly huge scale with another similar series documented in a book I made here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_NUswGzN8Q
In fact I just realised that there is a Richter in there...isn't this exactly what he is doing himself, sampling his own paintings?! In the absence of funds to actually produce this work back in 2003 I even made a scale model of an exhibition of the series as they would appear in a large white space that is uncannily similar to this one. I believe it has been gathering dust in the back of my dealer's plan chest for about 9 years!

Jonathan Lewis said...

I made a video of my model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a_KQbcaHJo&feature=plcp

Anonymous said...

It's true that these images are very simple to make. However, they become very interesting because it's Gerhard Richter making them. Much of his other work contains a critique of the technical image (images made by a machine), so these Patterns seem to be a continuation of that line of inquiry.

It's fair enough to require that an individual work be read as part of the artist's complete project. Each work should not be required to stand by itself. I'd say the Patterns are a good example of that.

Re: the other comment about patterns and cinema, the artist Kurt Ralske has done some interesting work in this area.