without a reason…

Was just watching Gerhard Richter, Painting…

Gerhard Richter Painting trailer from Kino Lorber on Vimeo.
View video above on vimeo

Kind of warming up to his grays and the way he “buries” the colors in it and in white and in blacks. Black and white never appealed to me but now I can see it in a different light, so to speak.

Funny the way he explained why it was difficult to paint in front of the camera, how painting is a secret act and being filmed is worse than being in hospital, being exposed and naked. I like his honestly and his humbleness/shyness, and the way he moved from figurative to abstract, and between photography and painting.

And what he said about his painting process was very interesting…

“When I first approach a canvas theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on it. Then there is a condition I must react to by changing it or destroying it. There is no concept, its not like a figurative painting, with a template. Something happens spontaneously, not by itself, but without a plan or a reason.

Q: But it is also about, without a plan, there one thinks at first of Automatism, a 20th century movement, that proposed painting without a plan. But that’s not the case.

No.

Q: It’s is not the idea that without a plan the subconscious will articulate itself.

No.

Q: Or the other model: without a plan you avoid compositonality. Like Ellsworth Kelly. Composition by chance.

Not that either.

Q: So the question is you paint without a plan but you know exactly when its right. So what’s the correlation between planlessness and making the judgement that decides “now its a painting”

Each step forward is more difficult and I feel less and less free and concluded there is nothing left to do. When according go to my standards nothing is wrong any more then I stop.Then its good.

Q: And what is right and wrong?
The wrong consciousness, material or precess?

It just doesn’t look good. that is what’s wrong.

Q: Can we go a bit deeper than looking good or bad?

Its extremely difficult it is.
We’re all completely equal here, the producer and consumer, artist and observer, both must have one quality: to be able to see if its good or not, to make that judgement.

Q: Is good related to ‘truth’?

Yes, of course.

Q: So there is a component of truth that a picture must express to be good?

Yes.”

Gerhard Richter