Maybe we didn't even have a chance. The message of American Pop Art was so powerful and so optimistic. But it was… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
A lot of different things had to come together over the years, accumulated experiences of a general and personal nature, before the… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Family photos, pictures of groups, those are truely wonderful. And they are just as good as the old masters, just as rich… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I don't how I can describe the quality that is only found in art (be it music, literature, painting, or whatever), this… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I choose depending on the way I feel; randomly, in other words. When I haven't done anything for a long time, I… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Since there is no such thing as absolute rightness and truth, we always pursue the artificial, leading, human truth. We judge and… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I wanted to make it as anonymous as a photo. But it was perhaps also the wish for perfection, the unapproachable, which… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
My pictures are devoid of objects; like objects, they are themselves objects. This means that they are devoid of content, significance or… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I think everybody starts out by seeing a few works of art and wanting to do something like them. You want to… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
In the beginning I tried to accommodate everything there that was somewhere between art and garbage and that somehow seemed important to… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
... landscapes or still-lifes I paint in between the abstract works; they constitute about one-tenth of my production. On the one hand… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I've never found anything to be lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can see many more things in it… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
If, while I'm painting, I distort or destroy a motif, it is not a planned or conscious act, but rather it has… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures.… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures.… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
It's that same quality I've been talking about. It's neither contrived, nor surprising and smart, not baffling, not witty, not interesting, not… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The smudging makes the paintings a bit more complete. When they're not blurred, so many details seem wrong, and the whole thing… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
When I paint from a photograph, conscious thinking is eliminated. I don't know what I am doing. My work is far closer… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The Atlas belongs to the Lenbachhaus in Munich - it's long since ceased to belong to me. Occasionally I run across it… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Perhaps the choice is a negative one, in that I was trying to avoid everything that touched on well-known issues - or… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. ... The ability to believe is our outstanding… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
It was not possible for us to produce the same optimism and the same kind of humour or irony. Actually, it was… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
When I first painted a number of canvases grey all over (about eight years ago), I did so because I did not… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
This superficial blurring has something to do with the incapacity I have just mentioned. I can make no statement about reality clearer… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I was a student, and as such you generally rely on prior models of how to make art, but these were not… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
As I see it, all of them - Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest - are only part of an… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The first colour charts were unsystematic. They were based directly on commercial colour samples. They were still related to Pop Art. In… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The grey is certainly inspired by the photo-paintings, and, of course, it's related to the fact that I think grey is an… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
But my motivation was more a matter of wanting to create order - to keep track of things. All those boxes full… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Unlike the photography and prints, I never catalogued, kept track of or exhibited the sketches. I sold some occasionally, but never saw… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Well, the beginning is actually quite easy, because I can still be quite free about the way I handle things - colours,… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: 'binding back', 'binding' to the… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I'm never really sure what that word means, but however inaccurately I use it, 'classical' was always my ideal, as long as… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Only about one per cent of my paintings show family members. Do they help me deal with problems? It's likely that these… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
They are specific places I have discovered here and there when I am on the road to take photos. I go especially to take… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
To me, grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, noncommitment, absence of opinion, absence of shape. But grey, like formlessness and… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
Yes, we were amazed when that happened. It was a real joke to us. Konrad Lueg and I did a Happening, and we used… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
A work of art is itself an object, first of all, and so manipulation is unavoidable: it's a prerequisite. But I needed the greater… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically faulty and the object can barely be identified.… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
Perhaps the choice is a negative one, in that I was trying to avoid everything that touched on well-known issues - or any issues… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
You can compare it to dreams: you have a very specific and individual pictorial language that you either accept or that you can translate… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
But it is also untrue that I have nothing specific in mind. As with my landscapes: I see countless landscapes, photograph barely 1 in… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
My landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful'... — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
I have always been structured. What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share
