Art should be serious, not a joke. I don't like to laugh about art. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I don't think I can do this - painting under observation. It's the worst thing there is, worse than being in the… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I believe that the quintessential task of every painter in any time has been to concentrate on the essential. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I often need a long time to understand things, to imagine a painting I might make. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
If the abstract paintings show my reality, then the landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning. — 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 Image
Art is the ideal medium for making contact with the transcendental, or at least for getting close to it. — 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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
I never worked at painting as if it were a job; it was always out of interest or for fun, a desire… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Art should be serious, not a joke. I dont like to laugh about art. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Well, I don't believe there are subjects that can't be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can't… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Art is always to a large extent about need, despair and hopelessness. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I don't believe in the reality of painting, so I use different styles like clothes: it's a way to disguise myself. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world. — 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
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
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
Painting pictures is simply the official, the daily work, the profession, and in the case of the watercolours I can sooner afford… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Experience has proved that there is no difference between a so-called realist painting - of a landscape, for example - and an… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
