Gerhard Richter Quotes

I Often Need A Long Time To Understand Things, To Imagine A Painting I Might Make.

Yes, We Were Amazed When That Happened. It Was A Real Joke To Us. Konrad Lueg And I Did A Happening, And We Used The Phrase Just For The Happening, To Have A Catchy Name For It; And Then It Immediately Got Taken Up And Brought Into Use. There's No Defence Against That - And Really It's No Bad Thing.

The Paint For The Grey Paintings Was Mixed Beforehand And Then Applied With Different Implements - Sometimes A Roller, Sometimes A Brush. It Was Only After Painting Them That I Sometimes Felt That The Grey Was Not Yet Satisfactory And That Another Layer Of Paint Was Needed.

In 1981, I Think, For The Kunsthalle In Düsseldorf. Before That I Designed A Mirror Room For Kasper König's Westkunst Show, But It Was Never Built. All That Exists Is The Design - Four Mirrors For One Room.

What Attracted Me About My Mirrors Was The Idea Of Having Nothing Manipulated In Them. A Piece Of Bought Mirror. Just Hung There, Without Any Addition, To Operate Immediately And Directly. Even At The Risk Of Being Boring. Mere Demonstration. The Mirrors, And Even More The Panes Of Glass, Were Also Certainly Directed Against Duchamp, Against His Large Glass.

Painting Is My Profession, Because It Has Always Been The Thing That Interested Me Most. I'm Of A Certain Age, I Come From A Different Tradition And, In Any Case, I Can't Do Anything Else. I'm Still Very Sure That Painting Is One Of The Most Basic Human Capacities, Like Dancing And Singing, That Make Sense, That Stay With Us, As Something Human.

Without Form, Communication Stops... Without Form, You Have Everybody Burbling On To Themselves, Whenever And However, Things That No One Else Can Understand And - Rightly - No One Else Is Interested In.

I Go To The Studio Every Day, But I Dont Paint Every Day. I Love Playing With My Architectural Models. I Love Making Plans. I Could Spend My Life Arranging Things.

Painting Pictures Is Simply The Official, The Daily Work, The Profession, And In The Case Of The Watercolours I Can Sooner Afford To Follow My Mood, My Spirits.

The Grey Paintings, For Example, A Painted Grey Surface, Completely Monochromatic - They Come From A Motivation, Or Result From A State, That Was Very Negative. It Has A Lot To Do With Hopelessness, Depression And Such Things. But It Has To Be Turned On Its Head In The End, And Has To Come To A Form Where These Paintings Possess Beauty. And In This Case, It's Not A Carefree Beauty, But Rather A Serious One.

Above All, It's Never Blind Chance: It's A Chance That Is Always Planned, But Also Always Surprising. And I Need It In Order To Carry On, In Order To Eradicate My Mistakes, To Destroy What I've Worked Out Wrong, To Introduce Something Different And Disruptive. I'm Often Astonished To Find How Much Better Chance Is Than I Am.

Maybe We Didn't Even Have A Chance. The Message Of American Pop Art Was So Powerful And So Optimistic. But It Was Also Very Limited, And That Led Us To Believe That We Could Somehow Distance Ourselves From It And Communicate A Different Intention.