Essay on Richter, Peyton, Murakami, Hirst: First Draft DUE 12th (Tuesday class13th) November: It should be about 450- 500 words long. Final Draft DUE November 19th (or 20th Tuesday class) The first draft will need to be shown to me and it is mandatory for you to visit me in office hours to discuss your essay in person with a copy of the first draft in hand. Office is JSCE 2030. Time: 11-12 Monday Wednesday or 1-4 Tuesday. Office meeting will be mandatory between 12th and 14th November. Here are some tips for the first draft and essay: Please try to include the following elements. 1. An introductory paragraph. 200 words 2. A paragraph describing one or two images. 200-300 words. Total 450-500 words. Details for introductory paragraph: 1. The introductory paragraph should include a quotation by the artist or about the artist. 2. The introduction should introduce the broad topics and themes your essay is going to address. Do not include themes and topics you are going to abandon or ignore later on. ( find about five quotes from/about the artist that strike you as informative, witty or relevant to your own observations and include them in a list at the end of the Gerhard Richter Linda Szabo Art Appreciation 1050 Instructor: Daniel McGrath October 9, 2011 Szabo 1 Gerhard Richter “…one would have to admit at the same time that a picture by Richter is always identifiable, whether it is a gray monochrome or a colored landscape or an abstraction.”1 “He is praised for being exceptionally “changeable,” but his veerings between abstraction and representation have a predictable rhythm.” 2 Everything in Gerhard Richter’s work coheres closely and information or intended interpretation is pared down to only the essential. Richter’s intellect and artistic capability clearly projects sophistication and innovation, yet there are certain distinctions in his lifelike-to-blurred paintings, multi-layered squeegee drug paintings, and color charts that viewers tend to easily identify as Richter’s. His genres have a wide variance, but they can all be classified with Richter’s style of emotional removal. Gerhard Richter, an East German born artist is known for turning photographic pictures into beautiful oil paintings that sometimes leave the observer to wonder: Is that a painting or a photograph? One of Richter’s most famous paintings, Uncle Rudi (1965) captures one of his two maternal uncles, in a classic and clearly observable example of Richter’s photo to blurring painting technique. To create the illusion of a blurred photograph, Richter manipulates the surface of a painting before it dries. He smears the paint in horizontal strokes to give it this effect. According to Richter, “I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant information.”3 1 Petra Kipphoff, “Der Maler am Ende seines Mythos” [The painter at the end of his myth], Die Zeit, December 17, 1993, 51, quoted in Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 167. 2 Jerry Saltz, “Scaling Richter,” The Village Art Voice, February 26, 2002. http://www.villagevoice.come/2002-02- 26/art/scaling-richter/ 3 Gerhard Richter, “notes, 1964-1965,” in DPP, 37, quoted in Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 86. Szabo 2 Richter’s Uncle Rudi was killed in the first days after he went to war. Maternally tied to his uncle, Richter identifies with him by modifying his photograph into a painting. He is depicted as a young enthusiastic German soldier in uniform proudly serving his country. The heavy horizontal blurring technique added to this painting suggests this was Richter’s attempt to take out the emotion and lessen the trauma caused by the loss of his uncle in war. In a less personal but potentially culturist view, the picture expresses the horror of war and German attempts to conceal a Nazi history. In Betty (1988), Richter paints his daughter from a photograph taken in the 1970s. By the time of this painting Betty is about 21 years old, yet he paints her from a photograph when she was a very young girl. Her body tilts towards the viewer but she is facing backwards creating a psychological line cast behind her. Instead of blurring, Richter completes the background with a uniform negative space leaving nothing but Betty and a small corner of the base she is sitting on. The painting is simple as are the interpretations that can be taken from this photo. As the young girl grows into maturity, maybe she is looking behind her to see what she is leaving behind. In an interview with Babette Richter in 2002, Gerhard Richter says this painting is “an idealization since it’s in essence a longing for culture, for the beauty in art which we no longer have which is why she turns away.”4 Since Richter keeps the painting simple one can enjoy the colorful, bright detail and take away any personal thoughts construed. 4 Babette Richter. Gerhard Richter interview by Babette Richter, Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007 (London: Thames &Hudson, 2009), 442-443. Figure 1 Uncle Rudi, Onkel Rudi 1965, 87 cm x 50 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 85 Figure 2 Betty 1988, 102 cm x 72 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 663-5 Szabo 3 Reader (1994) is an alluring display of how Richter continues to remove the emotion with a background blurring technique. In this striking painting of his third wife Sabine, Richter captures a very focused woman reading a paper with light chiaroscuro detailed on her hair, ear, neck, hands, and paper. Chiaroscuro shadows are dramatically cast on her neck and face. The background, paper, and Sabine’s hands are slightly diffused removing any focus off of those objects and placing them firmly onto Sabine’s intense reading of an article, oblivious to the world around her. The simple message depicts beauty as the concentration is clearly on the woman. The picture is warm and the slight out of focus gives it a romantic feel at the same time erasing emotion. Moving on to more abstract paintings, Richter’s January, December, November, (1989) were all painted around the time the Berlin wall came down. The squeegee smeared series of three multi-layered paintings seen below are displayed in the order painted. January, December, and November, each consists of two canvases placed so close together that they give the appearance of one large painting. All three paintings are primarily black and white painted on top of layers and layers of contrasting colors of the color wheel. Strong violets, blues, reds, Figure 3 Reader, Lesende, 1994 72 cm x 102 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 804 Figure 4 January, Januar, 1989 320 cm x 400 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 699 Figure 5 December, Dezember, 1989 320 cm x 400 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 700 Figure 6 November, 1989 320 cm x 400 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 701 Szabo 4 oranges, yellows and greens sporadically pop out at abstract points in these paintings when the squeegee was dragged across them. The white and black colors were used last so the vivid colors underneath only come out occasionally throughout the series. This color combination clearly depicts the somber moods of those cold dreary months in Germany. January is painted or pulled down in a vertical direction and contains more white than the other two months giving it the feeling of a brighter happier month. This painting also reveals more of the vibrant colors placed underneath the series of paintings maybe giving a hint that spring is not far away. December combines both horizontal and vertical drags with a few areas containing a crisscross pattern. The left side of the first canvas starts with horizon drags but changes to vertical pulls before the middle of the first canvas. The second canvas in December continues the vertical movement and then returns to the horizontal drags just before the center of the second canvas. This first third of the entire canvas is fairly clear while the last quarter of the canvas is clearly painted with a blurring technique combining vertical and horizontal streaks. The entire painting of December is conflicted and complicated. The November canvases have layered paint that is spread in a horizontal motion with very few colors peaking through. The colors that can be seen are primarily reds, oranges, and yellows. These colors generally give the feeling of warmth and these particular colors are associated with fall so one could imagine that fall is giving way to the darkness and cold that is closing in. This painting contains more blurring than the other two and it integrates several violent gouges digging deep into previous layers of paint. Since the paintings were hung in reverse it gives the appearance of going back in time. The current month is the most transparent and bright, while the distant months turn dark and dreary. The paintings also work like you mind, with the most recent being fresh and clear while Szabo 5 the most distant is foggy or hazy. The trio can take over a room, but the emotion taken out of the paintings allow you to see them as the conceptual paintings they are. Around the year 1966 and inspired by nothing more than racks of colors seen in a paint store, Richter began painting color charts. The charts had no message and no agenda. They were intended to be colorful and inspirational.5 While amazingly beautiful, these paintings do not contain even the tiniest amount of expressiveness. They are nothing less than an explosion of arbitrary color schemes. In 1024 Colours (1974), Richter used 1024 different colors. In order to produce so many different colors, he had to use different shades of the same color. Though no meaning is intended, this color chart is certainly attention-grabbing and mesmerizing. In 256 Colours, Richter continues with his arbitrary color scheme. This one is different from 1024 Colours as the colors are actually separated with a white boarder around each color. This boarder is “optically destabilized where the lines intersect, resulting in a black retinal pop (much like staring at a red spot and then seeing green when your eyes move to an empty space).” 6 These paintings distribute uneven color across a broad scheme. They provide no message or meaning, only beautiful visions of color. The South Transept window of Cologne’s Gothic Cathedral has got to be one of Richter’s most seen pieces of art. He was originally asked by the cathedral architect Barbara Schock- 5 Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 86. 6 Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter; Doubt and Belief in Painting,(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2003), 89. Figure 7 1024 Colours, 1024 Farben 1974 200 cm x 200 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 358-1 Figure 8 256 Colours, 256 Farben 1974 222 cm x 414 cm Oil on canvas, Catalogue Raisonné: 352-2 Szabo 6 Werner to create something with a figurative motif. This seemed to be one of Richter’s most difficult requests and it is noted that he almost gave up the tasking until he accidently placed a frame on one of his color charts and came up with the idea to create the window with a similar approach. According to Richter, “I got a real shock, because it looked so good, it was the only honest possibility.”7 For the cathedral’s enormous window, Richter used a computer to randomly arrange 72 distinct colors in roughly 11,500 squares. The exquisite kaleidoscope window pattern effectively removes any message or meaning, no doubt hard to swallow for some of the religiously divine. The outcome was a burst of color that changes with the light that shines upon it. According to Monsignor Josef Sauerborn, “in its overwhelming abundance of color…it is a symphony of light.”8 Richter’s has an amazing ability to show many different styles of art to include blurred picture art, abstract multi-layered squeegee paintings, and detailed color charts. Regardless of what he accomplishes he has the intellect understanding to remove insignificant details, so only necessary information is left behind. This remarkable technique has been captured in so much of his artwork that when you see one of his works you almost instantly know it is his. The removal of his own interpreted emotion allows those who view his work to see it for what it is with very little preconceived notions provided by the artist. 7 Peter Kipphoff., “Coincidence and Illumination,” Signandsight.com, September 19, 2007, http://www.signandsight.com/features/1547.html 8 Spiegel Online International, “Gerhard Richter’s Symphony of Light”, August 27, 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,502271,00.html Figure 9 Cologne Cathedral Window, Kölner Domfenster, 1974 2300 x 900 cm Mouth-blown, genuine antique glass Catalogue Raisonné: 900 Szabo 7 Bibliography Elger, Dietmar, Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Kipphoff, Peter. “Coincidence and Illumination,” Signandsight.com, September 9, 2007. http://wwww.signandsight.com/features/1547.htm. Kipphoff, Petra. “Der Maler am Ende seines Mythos” [The painter at the end of his myth], Die Zeit, December 17, 1993, 51, quoted in Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 167. Richter, Babette. “Gerhard Richter, interview by Babette Richter, Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007 London: Thames &Hudson, 2009. Richter, Gerhard, “notes, 1964-1965,” in DPP, 37, quoted in Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Saltz, Jerry. “Scaling Richter,” The Village Art Voice, February 26, 002. http://www. villagevoice.com/2002-02-26/art/scaling-richter/ Spiegel Online International, “Gerhard Richter’s Symphony of Light”, August 27, 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,502271,00.html Storr, Robert. Gerhard Richter; Doubt and Belief in Painting. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2003. Compare and Contrast 150 words 1. A chart that list possible topics to discuss similarities/differences LINE, SHAPE, SPACE, TEXTURE, TECHNIQUE, Abstract/figurative, realism/illusionism, COLOR: Warm/cool, complimentary/analagous/arbitrary color schemes. Make a simple diagram of points of interest you find in each image. Vanishing points, horizon lines etc... 2. Prepare 150 word answers for each question by looking at similarities and differences that either work demonstrate. (Answers should be written in full sentences/prose.) Do not waste time with biographical info, go straight into image analysis and try to craft a thesis if you can. Suggestions: Choose select topics from those you chart out and introduce them within the first 50 words each essay. Then go on to explain their use in each work in the next 50 words. Use the final 50 worlds to suggest reasons why the artist is using these techniques. What might the artist be attempting to communicate? You will not be able to address every topic in 150 words so you can write more (please do so if you wish!) however if you limit yourself to 150 words you must choose the most important topics and develop them carefully. Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 Gustave Caillebotte’s Rainy Day and Georges Seurat’s La Grande Jatte have many artistic similarities mixed in with their dramatic contrasts. The similarities include their compositional devices like diagonal balance, the use of scale and texture gradient to suggest 3D space, repetition of visual motif’s like the prominent umbrellas to unify the composition. Their contrasting features include colors schemes: one is bright and saturated with intense hues the other subdued utilizing more subtly crafted tints and shades. Lines are actual in Rainy Day, and only implied in Grande Jatte. This is largely dictated by the diverging techniques of smoothly transitioning chiaroscuro and Pointillism. In Rainy Day outlines are stark and clear, outlines in Grande Jatte are the more hazy lines are suggested by high densities and accumulations of dots and stippled marks. Caillebotte’s system of multipoint linear perspective creates a very illusionistic scene versus a much flatter and abstract work by Seurat. Compositional diagonal balance can be seen in Rainy Day with the couple walking down the sidewalk in the lower right of the painting in their dark colors, Seurat employs the same composition with the prominent couple in a similar position. Indeed Seurat was aware of Caillebotte’s painting and possibly borrowed the idea. In the upper left taking up a similar amount of space is a large building with a light complimentary color. In La Grande Jatte, the dark blue dress of the woman in the lower right has an analogous relationship with the diagonal balance of the lighter blue lake in the upper left. Both pictures show scale with the size of the people getting smaller giving the illusion of depth. Repetition and unity can be seen in both paintings with the umbrellas in Rainy Day and the parasols in La Grande Jatte. To some degree this motif unifies the activity and atmosphere each artist is trying to create. The texture gradient can be clearly seen in the faces, cobble stones, and buildings in Rainy Day which turns into a smoother surface on the cobblestones that is almost like a reflective pool. While not as obviously visible in La Grande Jatte, the texture gradient can be seen on the faces of the people in the painting. The faces up close include many colors and shades while the faces of those farther away have less saturated or light and dark contrasts. The contrasting colors include the dark colder grays and blacks used in Rainy Day, while La Grande Jatte is loaded with bright warm, oranges, reds, yellows and greens. The lines used in Rainy Day are actual analytical lines, but those used in La Grande Jatte are implied by using stippling. Seurat’s painting technique is cartoonish where Caillebotte’s technique is based on realism almost photographic looking. Caillebotte creates three vanishing points in his painting and in contrast Seurat’s is not visible. Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte 1884-1886 Henri Matisse’s The Red Room and Jan Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance are comparable in that they both have complimentary color schemes, a diagonal balance, psychological lines, and both project harmony. In contrast their pallets are either hot or cold, one maintains depth while the other does not, and one has a linear perspective. The complimentary color scheme in The Red Room is displayed in a clear use of the red and blue on the walls and table. In Vermeer’s painting it can be seen in the woman’s blue jacket and the yellow and orange color projected in her skirt and the window curtain. The diagonal balance is between both women in the bottom right and the pictures on the upper left. The psychological lines in both paintings direct the viewer to the fruit bowl in Matisse’s painting and the balance in Vermeer’s. The calmness in the features both women project harmony throughout the scenes. In contrast The Red Room has a very hot color pallet with bright reds while Woman Holding a Balance uses a cold pallet of darker blues and earth tones. The Red Room has no depth. It is a flat two dimensional scene playing with the perception of space. In complete contrast Vermeer’s painting is three dimensional and lifelike. Matisse paints without linear perspective while Vermeer has one point linear perspective identified on the picture. Henri Matisse The Red Room, 1908 (Harmony in Red) Jan Vermeer Woman Holding a Balance, 1664 rough draft) 3. Then you finish the paragraph with a clever thesis sentence: The intro should conclude with a carefully crafted thesis of approx 25 words. It is a useful experiment to try to sum up the point of your essay, or the general argument you are trying to make by asking your self: "How can I sum up the artist in 25 or less?" Often the answer is your authentic gut reaction to the work and it can be used as a guiding principle for the rest of the paper. This sentence of about 25 words can also serve as a hypothetical way to convince a friend to go see the exhibition of the artist in question. So you can ask your self when crafting the thesis sentence, "How can I quickly convince the reader to keep reading?" or "How can I get my friend to go see this show with me?" Often, what you come up with in answering the question is compelling enough to serve as a thesis sentence. This can work well in any persuasive writing you do for other subjects. Details for paragraph: 1. Start with a a topic sentence that refers back to one of the topics you introduce in the introduction. Craft this carefully. Make it catchy. 2. Then begin to describe one or more of the artist's works, or related work by other artists or sources material exploited by artist. Give the title and date of the pictures immediately if you can. Italicize the title and give date in parenthesis. e.g. Painting (2001). Then discuss pertinent details about the images. color and/or line, texture, design. Refer to philosophical, religious, economic or political content if needed. Try to relate these things to the topic if possible. Sometimes only a few formal elements need to be written about. Some may be irrelevant. Generally at least one description of possible content is enough. Color or line might be equal or they may be dominant. Sometimes texture may dominate. That depends on the individual work. 3. Include a quote about the artist if possible. You should have a collection of quotes ready for this through ordinary research. The quote can either describe the work or be related to the topic. 4. The paragraph should be about 200 words long. Feel free to use a single paragraph to compare 2 works. This could be 2 works by same artist or 2 artists or work and original source material used by artist. This often leads to a more insightful and lively paragraph. It allows you to argue your own point and identify special things about each work. Did the artist change a detail here or there? Is the theme a repeated obsession for the artist? etc. More images constitute more evidence for your arguments. Include an image of every image you write about. For the FINAL essay just repeat this paragraph structure until you hit about 1,400-1,500 words. Normally you will need to leave about 200 words for a conclusion. Sources: quote or cite at least one Art Magazine: Artforum, Art In America, Freize, Flash Art. Quote or cite at least one Newspaper from the following list: The Guardian, New York Times, The London Times, The London Telegraph. Look at Youtube and other unusual sources for accounts of the artists. www.guardian.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk online sources for newspaper articles are good just remember to use full URL. Use Wikipedia for initial research but do not under any circumstances quote directly from wiki. Follow their citations to original articles in the reference section. I am flexible with formats but imitating the Essay I provided is the safest bet… DO NOT forget to add a works cited page or a bibliography. Additionally if you do mention a WORK provide an image. Contact the studio of Artist for details or questions. All these artists are alive. I hope this helps as a guide. Email me back if you have questions.