The Daily Practice of Painting

"In many ways Gerhard is the opposite of Warhol in his writings and conversations. Warhol, in his early interviews, would say things like, “Ask somebody else something else, I am too stoned to talk right now.” Far from a Warholian idiot savant , Richter is immersed in the tradition of German idealist philosophy and romantic painting, and that of modernist art. He has European culture at his fingertips, and that is fully evident not only in his paintings but also in his texts, as collected in The Daily Practice of Painting. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . As you say, Richter is paradoxical. More than any other artist I discuss here, he takes on the full force of European art – its full burden if you like. At the same time he understands that it is completely transformed by spectacular society and mass media. It is that doubleness that makes his works and his writings so paradoxical. He wants to hold on to the grand tradition, even as he understands that it is utterly transformed by modernist art and mass culture alike. Richter does all the traditional genres of painting: Landscape, portraiture, still life, even history painting. But these are all shot through with the photographic. That’s why my chapter on his work is titled “Gerhard Richter, or The Photogenic Image”. What he shows us in his paintings is how we see the world through a photographic-filmic lens – and now an electronic lens as well. Yes, the canvas is no longer a window to a natural world. It is mediated many times over. Even as Richter treats the grand old subjects of European painting, he also shows how we are fully mediated in our experience."