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 truth... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look… — 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
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
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
Everything has a reason, including the selection of the photos, which was not arbitrary but appropriate to the period, its highs and… — 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
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
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
Illusion - or rather appearance, semblance - is the theme of my life (could be theme of speech welcoming freshmen to the… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I didn't actually know what the protesters in the West really wanted. It was fantastic here, so much freedom, and that was… — 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
I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which… — 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
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
My method is related to an attempt to do something that might be understood by today's world, or that could at least… — 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
In 1981, I think, for the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf. Before that I designed a mirror room for Kasper König's Westkunst show, but… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Of course, pictures of objects also have this transcendental side to them. Every object, being part of an ultimately incomprehensible world, also… — 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
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 painter sees the semblance of things and repeats it. That is, without fabricating the things himself, he fabricates their semblance; and,… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Contact with like-minded painters - a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our… — 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
