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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that painting conveys complex, often abstract ideas that go beyond mere visuals.
Gerhard Richter's quote speaks to the essence of painting as an art form that aims to express deeper and often abstract concepts that cannot be easily visualized or understood. He suggests that the true value of a good painting lies in its ability to grapple with the incomprehensible, thus elevating it above simplistic or shallow works, which may be easy to interpret but lack depth. The complexity inherent in art challenges viewers to engage with ideas and emotions that transcend literal representation.
In practice
During an art critique, this quote can illustrate the importance of depth in artistic expression.
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.
I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.)
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.'
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
We're always observing, and we're cautious people. We really want attention, but at the same time, we're ashamed of wanting attention. All those bizarre qualities of being outside are necessary for being a writer.
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.
There is this aura that the three-act play is the important one: it's the one that you do to win the Pulitzer. Some part of you falls for that, and then after a while, you don't fall for that.
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