Some Thoughts on "Gerhard Richter Painting," a film by Corinna Belz
If you are curious about what happens when an artist paints,if you have ever wanted to be a fly on the studio wall, see this movie. Click here for the film's website (www.gerhard-richter-painting.de/the_film.php). It is currently playing at the Film Forum in Manhattan and has been held over long beyond its expected closing date.
In the spring and summer of 2009, Corinna Belz filmed Gerhard Richter, recognized internationally as one of the most significant artists of our time, as he worked on a series of large abstract paintings. Richter works with only primary colors and what is called his squeegee technique to produce beautiful multilayered canvases. You are brought into his very large, very bright, very clean and spare studio space where Richter works with two assistants, two men who appear to know a lot about how to strain paint and how to talk (and not talk) with a highly talented and sensitive artist.
The film shows you how paint is applied, scraped off, and added to. There is a tremendous amount of physicality involved -- Richter walks repeatedly to and from his work, getting long views; most impressively, with lots of muscle, he drags the large squeegee across the canvas. Sometimes the tool has been loaded with paint, other times it is drawn while empty across what already exists on the canvas.
The film also shows some of what is not physical or material in painting -- a lot about the complicated emotions that are involved in the work. There are some moments of seemingly pure joy. At the end of the film, the last words we hear Richter speak are: "This is great fun." But we also see how psychologically demanding and painful painting can be. At one point in the filming, things are not going well from Richter's perspective. He is feeling stuck about what to do next. He has already put a lot of paint down but he decides he needs more and he slathers the squeegee with blue paint. Then, he stops. He knows that is not right, that he has a mistake. He is discouraged and slips into annoyance with the filming, talking about how hard it is to be so observed, how that observation makes things different in what he knows to be a highly personal and even secretive process. There is a lesson here for anyone who thinks that artists only have fun in their studios.
We learn something about how artists make choices. Richter talks about how painting abstractly differs from figurative work, from working from a model or objects in the world. There is no template in abstract painting. He only has a direction, a condition to respond to, something to feel responsible to once he has placed some paint on the canvas. Only then does the work begin. He also shares some of what are the sources for the ideas and moods for his paintings. For example, we see tacked to his studio wall an eerily ambiguous photograph and images of other art. He explains that these help him establish whether or not his own work is good.
