Quote

Painting is consequently an almost blind, desperate effort, like that of a person abandoned, helpless, in totally incomprehensible surroundings.

Gerhard Richter

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gerhard Richter
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: February 9
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
University Teacher
Visual Artist
Elbflorenz
Gehede Lixite
Geruharuto Rihitā
Gerd Richter
Totally
Blind
Painting
Incomprehensible
Effort
Consequently
Almost
Surroundings
Persons
Helpless
Person
Abandoned
Like
Desperate

More quotes by Gerhard Richter

Image
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
Image
Not the victims of any specific ideology of the left or of the right, but of the ideological posture as such. This has to do with the everlasting human dilemma in general: to work for a revolution and fail.
Gerhard Richter
Image
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
Image
The year is always correct, also the month, only the day can be another. But that occurs to me only in the moment of writing it down.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Cage is much more disciplined. He made chance a method and used it in constructive ways I never did that. Everything here is a little more chaotic.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Weeks go by, and I dont paint until finally I cant stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost dont want to talk about it, because I dont want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Art should be serious, not a joke. I dont like to laugh about art.
Gerhard Richter
Image
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
Image
Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that.
Gerhard Richter
Image
What counts isn't being able to do a thing, it's seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.
Gerhard Richter
Image
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
Image
I often need a long time to understand things, to imagine a painting I might make.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I wanted to make it as anonymous as a photo. But it was perhaps also the wish for perfection, the unapproachable, which then means loss of immediacy. Something is missing then, though that is why I gave that up.
Gerhard Richter
Image
The grey is certainly inspired by the photo-paintings, and, of course, it's related to the fact that I think grey is an important colour - the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair. In other words, for states of being and situations that affect one, and for which one would like to find a visual expression.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy.
Gerhard Richter
Image
The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically faulty and the object can barely be identified. A painting of a murder is of no interest whatever but a photograph of a murder fascinates everyone.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Above all, it's never blind chance: it's a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I've worked out wrong, to introduce something different and disruptive. I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am.
Gerhard Richter
Image
My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I see the bomber pictures as an anti-war statement... which they aren't - at all. Pictures like that don't do anything to combat war. They only show one tiny aspect of the subject of war - maybe only my own childish feelings of fear and fascination with war and with weapons of that kind.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I am thankful that the church exists, thankful that it has done such great things, giving us laws, for instance - 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not', and established Goodness and Evil. That's what all religions do, and as soon as we try to replace them, worldly religions like fascism and communism take over.
Gerhard Richter