Gerhard Richter - Panorama Review

Gerhard Richter - Panorama

Tate Modern

December 2011

I went to this exhibition full of anticipation. A friend had raved about it and everything I had read seemed to indicate that this was to be an exceptional experience. However this is not an ‘easy’ exhibition. It is challenging on many levels. It is huge, 17 rooms, and work that spans 5 decades. The content ranges from the intimate family portraits and floral still-lifes, to the terrors of Natzi Germany and 9/11. He is trying to deal with destruction, terror, oppression, repression and inhumanity.

Richter is without doubt a considerable force, an artist of great intelligence and technique. His work shows a constant exploration of paint and it’s properties, his skill is never in question, but I found the continual  punctuation of photo- realism a kind of continual reminder that he has mastered traditional techniques, and wants you to know it. I am sure that Richter is not so vain but for me these paintings were distracting from his obvious interest in the abstract.

I felt that Richter’s german character was strongly prevalent, there is always something formal in his work, and a certain detachment (perhaps this just a lack of Romanticism which we Scots seem to value in our paintings). This is probably due in some part to the use of photographs (shockiing!!). The predominant use of monotone and the blurring distances the viewer, and by default, I think the artist from the subject matter. Richter paints the picture, but the comments are entirely your own. He tells the story like a reporter. Perhaps this is his strength, because he is detached we can fill in the human elements/emotions. Our reactions can be uniquely ours.

I loved his exploration of monotone abstractions in the ’60‘s. Photographs could never do justice to the subtlety of their texture and tone but it makes you wonder how much influence the war and his early upbringing in East Germany had on Richter. Room after room of monotone and grey becomes oppressive. Even the landscapes, great seas, and fluffy clouds are always shadowed and overcast. In all of his early work I was looking for a symbol of hope, some ‘light.

When he turns to colour in a series of abstractions the colour is a brash and acidic violence. They are overwhelming, brutal and disturbing, as though this adventure into colour was a violent reaction to the soft, blurred monotones of his earlier work.

I loved his exploration of monotone abstractions in the ’60’s  and 70‘s. Here he is confident, energetic, vibrant, even without colour. We can see influences of Rothco and Pollock, but they are pure Richter.

 In Richter’s later work  -Cage, September 11, Sinbad paintings done with an industrial squeegee, there seems to be more subtlety and light. Finally Gerhard and I were on the same page. The tones were softer and the ambience gentler, even though September 11 is a painting of a catastrophic event of terrorism you are given the beautiful soft blue of the sky. This highlights the awfulness of the event; when things can be beautiful and yet shocking. When we look at the monotone Baader Meinhof paintings we are distanced from them, not only by time, but by the blurring, the lack of colour, and the seemingly cold reportage approach.

I have to ask myself why are these paintings so huge, throughout the exhibition the scale becomes bigger and bigger. If you are going to use a large, and I mean massive, canvases then surely there has to be some justification for that choice. Is using ever larger canvases part of growing older, when your own mortality looms ever closer, is making your own ‘mark’ larger, life affirming?  Are we invited to get lost in the sensation, the colour, the blur? I cannot believe it simply a case of “because I can”. Perhaps as Richter himself says “it is to create something incomprehensible”.

It seems somewhat ironic that I adore Richter’s paintings when I see them photographed. The compression seems to enliven and enrich them. Details are glorious. I don’t know why, but I do prefer the photos, of paintings of photos! Am I glad I went? A resounding yes”. Was it challenging? Oh yes! Did I learn anything? Yes, Yes, Yes!