Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

NY: Museum of Modern Art, 2002. Hardbound. VG+/VG+. Grey cloth with color pictorial dustjacket. with 340 pp., 87 bw and 138 color plates;. Published on the occasion of the 2002 exhibition of the same title curated by Robert Storr, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (also appearing at The Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC). From the publisher: "Ranging from photo-based pictures to gestural abstraction, Gerhard Richter's diverse body of work calls into question many widely held attitudes about the inherent importance of stylistic consistency, the "natural" evolution of individual artistic sensibility, the spontaneous component of creativity, and the relationship of technological means and mass media imagery to traditional studio methods and formats. Unlike many of his peers, he has explored these issues through the medium of painting, challenging it to meet the demands posed by new forms of conceptual art. In every level of his varied output--from his austere photo-based realism of the early 60s, to his brightly colored gestural abstractions of the early 80s, to his startling cycle of black-and-white paintings of the Baader-Meinhof group--Richter has assumed a critical distance from vanguardists and conservatives alike regarding what painting should be. The result has been among the most convincing renewal of painting's vitality to be found in late 20th- and early 21st-century art. With an extensive and insightful critical essay by curator Robert Storr, a recent interview with the artist, a chronology, an exhibition history.