Talk about painting: there's no point. By conveying a thing through the medium of language, you change it. You construct qualities that… — 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
When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to… — 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
In truth, factual information - names or dates - have never interested me much. Those things are like an alien language that… — 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
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
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
Painting is the making of an analogy for something non-visual and incomprehensible - giving it form and bringing it within reach. And… — 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
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
I go to the studio every day, but I dont paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I believe in painting and I believe in eating too. What can we do? We have to eat, we have to paint,… — 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
As a matter of fact, it was only through the dealer Fred Jahn that I succeeded in overcoming my reservation about the… — 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
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 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
Painting is my profession, because it has always been the thing that interested me most. I'm of a certain age, I come… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The desire to please is maligned, unfairly. There are many sides to it. First of all, pictures have to arouse interest before… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
People won't stop painting, just as they won't stop making music or dancing. This is a facility we have. Children don't stop… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The paint for the grey paintings was mixed beforehand and then applied with different implements - sometimes a roller, sometimes a brush.… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
There was no special event that made me decide. I had collected some photos and the idea was in the back of… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Painting is traditional but for me that doesn't mean the academy. I felt a need to paint; I love painting. It was… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The grey paintings, for example, a painted grey surface, completely monochromatic - they come from a motivation, or result from a state,… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
It can be a work by Mondrian, a piece of music by Schönberg or Mozart, a painting by Leonardo, Barnett Newman or… — 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
