Volume 3 Number 2 INTERVIEWS: PART FIVE Marina Abramovic “A society Carl Andre which cannot Mary Lucier atended puote _ Cady Noland giniaryfeetes — Quattara Dy ys ag Gerhard Richter PY Andres Serrano Wolfgang Staehle Bill Viola Yonemoto Brothers Fall/Winter 1990Publishers: Philip Pocock John Zinsser Editor: Klaus Ottmann Senior Editor: Philip Pocock Associate Editor: Joshua Decter Contributing Editors: Peter Doroshenko Bemard Goy Sabine Schiitz The Journal of Contemporary Art is published semi-annually in New York. No part of this peri- odical may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Journal of Contemporary Art. ‘The opinions expressed by the artists and con- tributors are not necessarily those of the Journal of Contemporary Art. JCA is not responsible for any unsolicited materials. Printed and bound in the United Stated of America. © 1990 ISSN: 0897-2400 Subscriptions: One-year [two issues], $12.00; Two-year [four issues}, $24.00. Please write or call: Journal of Contemporary Art 330 East 19 St., #CC New York, NY 10003, USA Tel. 212 460 5683 Fax 212 873 0401 =>Gerhard Richter “The paintings now, with the breakdown of the socialist systems, obtain another, more general component which they did not have a year ago.” Sabine Schiitz: About a year ago you creat- ed a great stir with your painting cycle “18. Oktober 1977.” This group of fifteen paint- ings, done in the black & white blurred photographic style of your earlier work grapples with the death of the RFA [Red Army Faction] terrorists in the Stammheim prison and unleashed a controversial and emotional discussion which went far beyond a purely artistic debate. Were you pursuing with these paintings a direct polit- ical concern? Gerhard Richter: No direct political con- cem, especially not in the sense of political painting which has always been understood as politically left, as art which exclusively criticized the so-called bourgeois-capitalis- tic conditions—that was not my concern. SS: But the subject has not only been highly explosive but it was also expressly political- by left. GR: ...which now can be considered com- 34 Vol. 3.2 a __“T shun to talk about the concerns or statements of the paintings.” Gerhard Richter Hi pletely laid to rest SS: ...exactly, and it is also already history. One could ask now why you came forward with these paintings in 1989 and not already ten years ago? GR: This time distance was probably neces- sary. But I cannot exactly explain the rea- sons for making something at this or at that point in time; something like that does not proceed by plan but rather unconsciously. It seems important to me that the paintings now, with the breakdown of the socialist systems, obtain another, more general com- ponent which they did not have so evidently a year ago. On the other side, I shun to talk about the concerns or statements of the paintings. I do not want to narrow them down through interpretation. SS: Do you see the terrorists today as vic- tims of a false idea which was inevitably doomed to failure? GR: Definitely. Nevertheless I also feel a certain sympathy for these people and for their desperate desire for change. I can understand very well if one cannot find this world acceptable at all. Furthermore, they were also part of a corrective which we will first be missing in the future. We will find other attempts at criticism eventually which will be less sentimental or superstitious and more realistic and therefore more effec- tive—I hope. SS: This cycle has been described as a resuscitation of historical painting which has been largely ignored by modern and JCA 35 nSHi Gerhard Richter contemporary art. Would you agree to this categorization? GR: This does not interest me that much. Even when it occurred to me, while painting, that these pictures could be regarded as his- torical paintings, that is, as something reac- tionary, it didn't make any difference to me. This is more a problem for theoreticians. SS: In your journal you once said that it shouldn't actually be possible to paint the way you paint: without subject matter. Was it different with this cycle? Was there a sub- ject matter? GR: Yes, there was. But this “black” note referred more to the abstract paintings and beyond that to the general helplessness and powerlessness which then of course can itself become a subject matter. But on the other hand, one has sometimes enough motivation which renders questions such as these abstract—one then just paints. SS: When you begin a painting, do you always know from the start what you want to paint? Could one say that you are a con- ceptual artist? GR: No, that I am not, and I don’t always know what I should paint or how the paint- ing should look in the end. Even with the Oktober cycle 1 did not know what kind of painting would come out of it. I had an enormous selection of photographs and I also had quite different ideas. Everything should have been much more comprehen- sive, much more to do with the life of the depicted, and at the end there was this small selection: nine subjects and very“A toilet-paper roll is not necessarily a funny picture.” Gerhard Richter | much focused towards death, almost against my intention. SS: One would not necessarily have expect- ed from a painter who twenty-five years ago already once painted toilet paper, to con- Front a subject so rich in content. Even the record player is in itself a banal object. However, the relation to the pictorial sub- ject seems to have changed considerably since that time. GR: Not considerably, because a toilet- paper roll is not necessarily'a funny picture. Nor is it true that I am now old enough to paint only sad things. But the record player painting is of course a very loaded painting, since the viewer knows that it is the record player of Andreas Baader, that in it was hid- den the deathly weapon, etc. That doesn’t make it a better painting, but it obtains first more attention, because one can attach more of a narrative to it. SS: There is quite evidently a decisive change of consciousness behind the fact that earlier it was about a toilet-paper roll or a clothes-drying rack, and today it is about a record player with a very concrete political significance. GR: Of course. I was younger then and part of a very different Zeitgeist, and seen in this light the paintings could have been even more different. But now I am noticing rather the resemblance—that not so much has changed. It is the same apparent indiffer- ence and emptiness in terms of statements. The toilet-paper roll and the clothes-drying rack are, just like the record player, sort of JCA 37H Gerhard Richter “poor person’s pictures,” like many other vague, banal subjects. SS: A varying rank is attributed in the dif. ferent paintings to the subject. For example, in 18. Oktober 1977 the subject is of entire- ly different content than in most earlier works. Could one say that each body of work possesses its own individual relation- ship to the pictorial subject and to reality? GR: That is certainly the case, only all the different paintings from different periods do have one established basis: that is, my atti- tude, my concern, which I articulate in different ways but never change essentially. The difference is therefore rather on the exterior and the statements I made on my lack of style and lack of opinion were in part a polemic against timely trends which I rejected. Or they were protective statements to procure a climate in which I can paint what I want. SS: But haven't you also demonstrated that it doesn’t have to matter what one paints? With the clothes-drying rack, the stag, or the housewife you have shown that it makes no difference. GR: But one can see that also as thematical- ly connected, and then it does make a differ- ence. These subjects: a clothes-drying rack, a family on the couch, a stag—they are also very selective. SS: Wasn't there also an ironic note? GR: I myself never think that way. If 1 allowed claims of irony then it was just to be left in peace. Somewhere of course I had 38 Vol. 3.2Gerhard Richter Hi been attached to the subject matters. I did not find the clothes-dryer ironic; there was something rather tragic about it, because it thematicizes life in public housing, where you cannot hang out your laundry. That was my clothes-drying rack which I rediscovered in a newspaper, quasi-objectified. Or the families—I often knew them per- sonally. And if I didn’t, they bore at least a resemblance with the families and fates that I did know. SS: Didn't that also have something to do with babbittism ? GR: Of course. But what does it mean? I cannot do much with that term. It is too arrogant for me. SS: What interests you in the subject matter of the stag? After all, one surely cannot Paint a stag today without the association of the “bellowing stag"”— without kitsch? GR: It is not the stag’s fault if he is painted badly, let's say, as a bellowing stag above “It is not the stag’s the couch. He is a beautiful animal like any fault if he is other. Of course the stag has also symbolic painted badly.” character—especially for us Germans with ‘our pronounced relationship to the forest. I myself wanted to become a forest ranger in my youth, and I once was totally enthusias- tic when I discovered and photographed a real-life stag in the forest. Later I painted him, and the painting then was less roman- tic than the photographs of my youth. SS: Also Castle Neuschwanstein with its pastry-cook architecture inevitably awakens the association with kitsch. JCA 39 4|| Gerhard Richter GR: In reality this castle is really ugly, hor- rible. But then it has also this other, seduc- tive side, that of the most beautiful fairy- tale, the dream of nobility, salvation, and beatitude. And that is the actual dangerous side—and therefore really a special example of kitsch. SS: In the bomber paintings I see a critical commentary on the subject of war. GR: ...which it is certainly not. Such paint- ings cannot accomplish anything against war. They also show only a very small aspect of the subject of war—perhaps only my childish feelings of anxiety and fascina- tion with such weapons. SS: Many years ago you called painting a “moral act.” What did you mean by that? GR: That was then already a helpless attempt to express that it is not a matter of painting beautiful pictures. It was also a claim for the significance of art, its enor- mous importance, which I conferred upon it. And that art is being made and consumed. today in never before known quantities, shows also already an entirely irrational desire for art, an almost religious longing. And if art were able to satisfy this longing completely, it would be a great advantage. It would be something like “pure belief” which would keep us from falling for mis- beliefs, religions and ideologies. SS: You always emphasize your anti-ideo- logical stance. What does ideology mean ‘for you? GR: A current example is the ideology of 40 Vol. 3.2“When Honnecker wears cashmere, he is quite natural, he forgets his belief or twists it a little.” Gerhard Richter H socialism in East Germany. People believe in it against all common sense—making themselves and others unhappy. This is a kind of mental disease, and, as it seems, an incurable one. Wouldn’t it be much more important to recognize, to see, how we are, what we are capable of, why we murder, why we are good, and first of all, what can be done? Instead we believe. That is a luxu- ry which we can no longer afford on this endangered globe. SS: Don't those who have the perspective and who proclaim the doctrines of salvation actually know that they are lying? GR: Surely not, because ideology controls the brain so thoroughly that there is no possibility to see the facts objectively; and the more the facts turn against the ideology, the more relentlessly it exerts control. Only in behavior that is totally unconscious and instinctivecan one escape it. Also: when Honnecker wears cashmere, he is quite natural, then he forgets his belief or twists it a little. SS: There is a film about your work that is called My Paintings Are Smarter Than Me. How so? GR: They should, by all means, be smarter than me. I no longer have to be able to fol- low them completely. They have to be something that I no longer understand entirely. As long as I comprehend them the- oretically, they are boring. SS: You have been described early on as “inconsequent,” because you have again JCA 41 “i| | Gerhard Richter and again changed clothes in regard to style. You have described yourself as insecure. Or is it more a matter of proving to yourself and others that you can do everything? GR: No, that is not so! Anybody can learn how to paint from a photograph. And there is so much that is conceivable as creative expression that I have not done. I am actual- ly relatively limited and also a bit one- sided: always only oil paintings. Inconse- quence is only an aftereffect of insecurity, from which I may be suffering, but which I also consider unavoidable and necessary. SS: So perhaps insecurity is the gener- al theme? GR: Maybe. In any case, it belongs to me, as a prerequisite. Here we also have objec- tively no reason to feel secure. Only the stupid are secure, or those who lie. SS: And the paintings don't lie? GR: No, they don’t claim anything—they make no statement, they cannot fool us. They are as mendacious as a tree, but often. less interesting. SS: Stylistic changes, stylistic breaks, quota- tions and perhaps also irony—these are all phenomena which have been called “post- modern.” Do confront these issues? Do you consider yourself a postmodern pioneer? GR: I don’t believe so, it has not interested me that much, But in a certain sense you could call me so; because I never had that consciousness of belonging to the avant- garde, and it also was never a concer of mine. Avant-garde—I find that usually too 42 Vol. 3.2 “Only the stupid are Secure, or those who lie.”“I really don’t have a very particular image in front of my eyes.” Gerhard Richter | | dogmatic and aggressive. SS: You started in 1976 to paint abstract paintings, to do something whose appear- ance you could not imagine beforehand. For that you have developed a totally new method. Was that an experiment? GR: Yes, it started in 1976 with small abstract paintings which allowed me to do all that which I had forbidden myself before: to put something down at random, and then to realize that it can never be ran- dom. This happened to open a door for me, If I don’t know what is emerging, that is, if I don’t have a fixed image, like with the pho- tographs which I paint from, then random- ness and chance play an important role. SS: How do you manage to control chance so that a particular painting with a particu- lar statement emerges, which, after all, is your declared concern? GR: I really don’t have a very particular image in front of my eyes, Rather I would like to obtain in the end a picture which I had not planned at all. Also, this method of working with randomness, chance, sudden inspiration, and destruction lets a particular type of picture emerge but never a predeter- mined one. The individual picture should therefore develop out of a painterly or visu- al logic which happens out of necessity. And by not planning the result I hope to be able to realize rather a correctness and objectivity which any piece of nature (or a ready-made) always possesses. Surely this is also a method to put into action uncon- scious efforts, as much as possible—after JCA 43 “i| | Gerhard Richter all, I would like to get to something more interesting than what I can think of myself. SS: Jiirgen Harten has written that your paintings are “painting about painting,” a Painted commentary on painting. GR: No, that is not correct. When I hear Bach, I can also say, that is music about music, because it is in a tradition which is in accord with itself, and where every note relates only to the next. That means, at the end, that it doesn’t want or say anything, like a game of chess. For whom should that be good? SS: For many artists the act of painting, the process, stays in the foreground of the work... GR: ...it is always only a matter of seeing. The physical act is unavoidable and certain- ly there is sometimes also a necessity ‘to paint with the whole body—but these actionists [Aktionisten]|—one can quite see what comes out of that! SS: In a catalogue published twenty years ago Klaus Honneff wrote that “bonne pein- ture” is not a matter close to your heart. What rank has painting in your work? GR: Much earlier, at the academy, I would have liked to paint as well as the painters I then esteemed: Bonnard, Cézanne, or ‘Velasquez. But I could never do that. And later I recognized that it is good not to be able to achieve that, because painting is about something totally different—that is, I guess, what “bonne peinture” refers to. I no longer know what that is, probably some- 44 Vol. 3.2“One can paint anything. To see whether what one does is good or not, is more difficult.” Gerhard Richter Hi thing like pure painting. SS: So painting which is only about itself and its own conditions is not the point? GR: As a basis there is first of all one con- cern: to make yourself a picture of the world, And for those pictures, painting is always only a means. That’s why one can never say about a bad picture that it is paint- ed well. Nevertheless, painting, the painter- ly means, is of elementary importance. One can see that in many paintings with high demands on content that mean well but remain totally unpalatable. This palatable- ness has nothing to do with luxury, it is something entirely existential. SS: Has “palatableness” very concretely to do with colors, brush work, technique? GR: More with seeing, I believe. The rest goes easy, that is no problem. One can paint anything. To see whether what one does is good or not, is more difficult. But it is the only important question. Duchamp has demonstrated that also: that it is not a matter of working with your own hands. It is not about being able to do something but that one sees what it is. Seeing is the decisive act that lastly equates the producer and the viewer. SS: Many of your paintings have a differ- ent medium—photography—inserted between them... GR: ... which is not different but essentially the same. Of course, in the beginning, a painting was for me only then a painting when it was painted. Later I was surprised JCA 45| Gerhard Richter to see that I could regard a photograph as a painting—and in my enthusiasm often as the better painting. It also functions the same way: it gives the appearance of something which it is not—and it does it faster and more precisely. That has cer- tainly influenced my point of view, and also my conception of production: that it is, for example, quite insignificant who took the photograph. SS: Especially in the black and white pho- tographic paintings it is emphasized that they are photographs, that they are clearly Paintings from photographs. GR: I wanted to bring exactly this resem- blance with photographs into the paintings because of the credibility alone, which especially black and white photos convey. They have something documentary about them, one believes them more than other pictures. SS: Isn't that a false belief? GR: This may be, of course. Januvary 15, 1990. Translated by Klaus Ottmann, 46 Vol. 3.2 “T wanted to bring exactly this resenthlance with 7 photographs into the Painting S, because of the credibility alone.”