I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.)
Interpretation
The quote expresses a preference for simplicity and authenticity over ostentation and imposed styles.
Gerhard Richter's quote reflects a belief in the value of simplicity and genuine expression in art and life. He associates style with violence, suggesting that the imposition of style can overshadow the true essence of things, including nature, photographs, and even oneself. His love for 'everything that has no style' indicates an appreciation for authenticity and a rejection of superficiality.
In practice
In an art critique, one might say, 'As Gerhard Richter famously noted, I also appreciate simplicity in art nature.'
Painting is the making of an analogy for something non-visual and incomprehensible - giving it form and bringing it within reach. And that is why good paintings are incomprehensible. Creating the incomprehensible has absolutely nothing to do with turning out any old bunkum, because bunkum is always comprehensible.
Form is all we have to help us cope with fundamentally chaotic facts and assaults. Formulating something is a great start. I trust form, trust my feeling or capacity to find the right form for something. Even if that is only by being well organized. That too is form.
Painting is another form of thinking.
My landscapes are not only beautiful, or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful.' By 'untruthful,' I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature. Nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless, the total antithesis of ourselves.
To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.
Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: 'Ah, yes, that's how he sees the world, that's his interpretation.'
Angel and Muse approach from without; the Angel sheds light and the Muse gives form (Hesiod learned of them). Gold leaf or chiton-folds: the poet finds his models in his laurel coppice. But the Duende, on the other hand, must come to life in the nethermost recesses of the blood.
I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I print it, wait a week and read it.
We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.
There are so many factors when you think of your own films. You think of the people you worked on it with, and somehow forget the movie. You can't forgive the movie for a long time. It takes a few years to look at it with any objectivity and forgive its flaws.
My favorite flamenco singers, they're not trying to look pretty. They're trying to put truth in what they do, in the way they express themselves. Sometimes that's not beauty, but it's beautiful.
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