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If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

Gerhard Richter

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Gerhard Richter
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: February 9
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
University Teacher
Visual Artist
Elbflorenz
Gehede Lixite
Geruharuto Rihitā
Gerd Richter
Choices
Photographic
Chance
Arbitrary
Part
Originals
Play
Original
Hard
Fast
Important
Image
Choice
Coming

More quotes by Gerhard Richter

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These pictures possibly give rise to questions of political content or historical truth. Neither interests me in this instance. And although even my motivation for painting them is probably of no significance, I am trying to put a name to it here, as an articulation, parallel to the pictures, as it were, of my disquiet and of my opinion.
Gerhard Richter
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Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. ... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster.
Gerhard Richter
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The smudging makes the paintings a bit more complete. When they're not blurred, so many details seem wrong, and the whole thing is wrong too. Then smudging can help make the painting invincible, surreal, more enigmatic - that's how easy it is.
Gerhard Richter
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... landscapes or still-lifes I paint in between the abstract works they constitute about one-tenth of my production. On the one hand they are useful, because I like to work from nature - although I do use a photograph - because I think that any detail from nature has a logic I would like to see in abstraction as well.
Gerhard Richter
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To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.
Gerhard Richter
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It's that same quality I've been talking about. It's neither contrived, nor surprising and smart, not baffling, not witty, not interesting, not cynical, it can't be planned and it probably can't even be described. It's just good.
Gerhard Richter
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When I look back on the townscapes now, they do seem to me to recall certain images of the destruction of Dresden during the war.
Gerhard Richter
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The reason these paintings are destined for New York is not because I am disappointed about a lack of German interest, but because MoMA asked me, and because I consider it to be the best museum in the world.
Gerhard Richter
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If the abstract paintings show my reality, then the landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning.
Gerhard Richter
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I pursue no intentions, no directions I have no program, no style and no mission.
Gerhard Richter
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Turning to the colour-classification methodology: The starting point are the four pure colours red, yellow, green and blue their in-between shades and scales of brightness result in colour schemes containing 16, 64, 256 and 1,024 shades. More colours would be pointless because it wouldn't be possible to distinguish between them clearly.
Gerhard Richter
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My paintings are wiser than I am.
Gerhard Richter
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Illusion - or rather appearance, semblance - is the theme of my life (could be theme of speech welcoming freshmen to the Academy). All that is, seems, and is visible to us because we perceive it by the reflected light of semblance. Nothing else is visible.
Gerhard Richter
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Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that.
Gerhard Richter
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Well, I don't believe there are subjects that can't be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can't paint.
Gerhard Richter
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I have no motif, only motivation. I believe that motivation is the real thing, the natural thing, and that the motif is old-fashioned, even reactionary (as stupid as the question about the meaning of life)
Gerhard Richter
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It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.
Gerhard Richter
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I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. In nature everything is always right: the structure is right, the proportions are good, the colours fit the forms. If you imitate that in painting, it becomes false.
Gerhard Richter
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I believe that he knew more what he was doing. I might be absolutely wrong about this, but that was my impression.
Gerhard Richter
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I often need a long time to understand things, to imagine a painting I might make.
Gerhard Richter