For Painting’s Great Skeptic, Gerhard Richter, History Is a Blur
The New York Times • • entertainment
Key Points:
- Gerhard Richter, a 94-year-old German painter, is featured in the exhibition "Gerhard Richter: Landschaften" at David Zwirner in New York, showcasing 26 landscape paintings from the 20th century.
- Richter's work, known for its blurry and staticky aesthetic, reflects his response to the political and ideological upheavals of the last century and continues to resonate in the 21st century.
- The exhibition includes rarely seen paintings from notable public and private collections, depicting landscapes like seas, mountains, and fields that evoke the Romantic sublime while maintaining a motionless, clotted quality.
- Some works in the show are labeled as "abstract pictures," where Richter uses a squeegee to scrape away confident brushstrokes, embodying his approach of negation and ambiguity in painting.
- The critic Jason Farago highlights Richter's art as a powerful model for overcoming cultural and intellectual deadlocks through its stuttering, equivocal style.