Gerhard Richter: Forty Years Of Painting
by Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter
List Price:
Our Price: $53.55
You Save: $31.45 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 months
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Gerhard Richter, Robert StorrEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-02-02
ISBN: 189102437X
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Book Reviews of Gerhard Richter: Forty Years Of Painting
Book Review: A great artist thumbs his nose at high art
Summary: 5 Stars
A lot of words been written lately about the unexpected revival of painting fueled by the current Gerhardt Richter painting retrospective captured in this book. It seems, according to some influential art scribes writing in the trail of this traveling exhibition, that the much heralded demise of painting, much like Mark Twains death, has been greatly exaggerated. Showcasing about 120 works over a 40-year period, this book is one of the most comprehensive retrospectives ever mounted about a contemporary painter in recent memory, and that by itself is a strong enough reason to buy it. However, it is what has been proven by Richters career and accomplishments, and unexpected stature in the art world (Sothebys recently dubbed him the most influential living artist in the world) and now driven home here, that makes this a-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn some lessons about the contemporary art world. You see, Richter doesnt fit the formula for success that many art curators and influential critics and other art powers-that-be have carefully crafted in the rarified atmospheres of the upper crusts of the art world. In fact, Richter breaks every rule that often starts being pressed upon 18-year old art students and then is hammered home in reviews and lectures by many contemporary art critics and curators. Rules like you better have your own recognizable style! or only new is good and the oddest rule of all: painting is dead! But Richter is not only a painter in an era forced to focus on video artists, performance stars and PhotoShop wonders, but also Richter wanders from style to style with an ease and speed that makes this book a lesson on half a dozen art movements of the last century beautifully continued onto the current one. Thumb through the pages here and youll soon discover that Richter is as much as ease with photorealism some ultra sharp and some foggy in detail -- as he is with pure abstraction and with romantic paintings of pretty clouds and scenic waterfalls. This is an artist who is not just happy with thumbing his nose at the well-enforced rule that a good artist has to have a clearly identifiable style and do something new, but who also seems intent on destroying the other forced formulas of the modern art world: he copies other artists works, works directly from photographs, blah, blah, blah all sins that would make all my art professors and most art critics sigh in disgust. But above all, Richter paints, and he paints in a time when painting has been dismissed as ailing and ancient. New is good, technology is good painting is dead. Why does Richter paint? Doesnt he get it? NOPE!! Its because it is all about painting! And managing to make fools of critics who forget that their job is to follow the artist not to lead the arts. What those who consider painting an ailing form will never understand (mostly because they are not painters), is that Richter cant and wont stop painting, because through his veins runs the same intoxicating venom that fueled their ancestral kin in the caves of Altamira and which will continue to drive painters long after todays critics and curators are forgotten dust. This book shouts: Art does not have to be new to be good, and technology is not the only venue to deliver great new contemporary art - it also continues to prove that painting will never die.
Summary of Gerhard Richter: Forty Years Of Painting
Ranging from photo-based pictures to gestural abstraction, Gerhard Richter's diverse body of work calls into question many widely held attitudes about the inherent importance of stylistic consistency, the inaturali evolution of individual artistic sensibility, the spontaneous component of creativity, and the relationship of technological means and mass media imagery to traditional studio methods and formats. Unlike many of his peers, he has explored these issues through the medium of painting, challenging it to meet the demands posed by new forms of conceptual art. In every level of his varied output--from his austere photo-based realism of the early 60s, to his brightly colored gestural abstractions of the early 80s, to his startling cycle of black-and-white paintings of the Baader-Meinhof group--Richter has assumed a critical distance from vanguardists and conservatives alike regarding what painting should be. The result has been among the most convincing renewal of painting's vitality to be found in late 20th- and early 21st-century art. With an extensive and insightful critical essay by curator Robert Storr, a recent interview with the artist, a chronology, an exhibition history, and nearly 300 color and duotone reproductions, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting marks a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary art in general, and Gerhard Richter in particular.The beautiful catalog Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting accompanies the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective of this prolific and important German artist. Richter's many artistic achievements vacillate between pure abstraction and a kind of realism. His realistic paintings, based primarily on personal photographs and images from newspapers, range in subject matter from the banal, like rolls of toilet paper, to the extremely potent, such as famous Nazi "doctor" Werner Hyde. The paintings have in common an emotional remove; the re-creating of photographic images points us toward our own possible emotional detachment to the influx of images in the world. A blurred chair, Jackie Kennedy, burning candles, family portraits--Richter lays them all out before us as if to say, Here, they are all the same. The insightful text by MoMA curator Robert Storr provides an in-depth look at Richter's life in postwar Germany, tracing the influences and environment that made his work possible. The book includes a revealing interview with the artist and a detailed chronology of his life and work, plus 138 color illustrations and 165 duotones. --J.P. Cohen
Artists, A-Z Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Artists, A-Z Books
Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintingsby Gary Schwartz
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1991-11-05; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $48.50
Life with Lowryby Tilly Marshall
Hutchinson; Published: 1981-02-16; Hardcover; Book
Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Lifeby Richard Meryman
Harper; Published: 1996-10-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.94
Price in other shops:
Georg Baselitz: Paintings 1964-67 [exhibition: May 1-31, 1985]by Georg Baselitz
Anthony d'Offay Gallery; Paperback; Book
Florence and Its Beauty: A Practical Guidebook to the Town and Its Monuments with 350 Illustrations and a Plan of the Principal Places of Interestby Sandra Orienti
G. Ramella - Florence, Italy; Published: 1956; Unknown Binding; Book
Lord of the Rings Sketchbookby Alan Lee
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2008-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Picassoby Patrick O'Brian
Harvill; Published: 1994; Paperback; Book
The Art of Adventureby Galen Rowell
Collins Pub San Francisco; Published: 1989-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.92
Price in other shops:
Calder JewelryOther Distribution; Published: 2007-12-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $350.00
POPism: The Warhol Sixtiesby Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett
Mariner Books; Published: 2006-09-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.27
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Paintingby James Ellroy, Ralph Rugoff, Alexandra Schwartz, Ed Ruscha
D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers; Published: 2010-02-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $41.74
Price in other shops:
Jean-Michel Basquiatby Dieter Buchhart, Glenn O'Brien, Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat
Hatje Cantz; Published: 2010-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $40.95
Price in other shops:
Franz Klineby Harry F. Gaugh
Abbeville Press; Published: 1994-02-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $45.50
Price in other shops:
Cy Twombly: A Monographby Richard Leeman
Flammarion; Published: 2005-06-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $77.60
Price in other shops:
Gerhard Richter Portraits: Painting Appearancesby Paul Moorhouse
Yale University Press; Published: 2009-04-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $37.85
Price in other shops:
Jackson Pollockby Ellen G. Landau
Abrams; Published: 2010-04-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $31.39
Price in other shops:
Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Paintingby Phaidon Press, Peio Aguirre, Negar Azimi
Phaidon Press; Published: 2011-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $55.39
Price in other shops:
Gerhard Richter: Large Abstractsby Benjamin Buchloh
Hatje Cantz; Published: 2009-03-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $32.29
Price in other shops:
De Kooning: A Retrospectiveby Jim Coddington, John Elderfield, Willem de Kooning
The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Published: 2011-09-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $47.25
Price in other shops:
Gerhard Richter: Panorama: A Retrospectiveby Achim Borchardt-Hume, Gerhard Richter
D.A.P./Tate; Published: 2011-10-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $40.95
Price in other shops: