Gerhard Richter, Interviewed

via ArtInfo, excerpt from a recent interview with Gerhard Richter:

Gerhard Richter

By Sarah Douglas

Published: November 11, 2009

[...]

Sarah Douglas: Do you see much contemporary art these days?

Gerhard Richter: You get so many magazines and invitations and catalogues, it’s too much! It’s a strange development that there is so much art.

SD: It’s probably because of the market.

GR: The market, and people want to be entertained. So I do see a lot, but I don’t really go out to the galleries.

SD: Do you think this is a good time for painting?

GR: It’s not. It’s been almost the end of the culture of painting for a hundred years. We have photography, film, installation… You know, I’m the only painter at this gallery. I didn’t realize this until now. All the others are conceptual, and I was struck by this: I thought, it cannot be.

SD: You’ve seen work by some of the gallery’s other artists?

GR: Last thing I saw was the film by Steve McQueen, Hunger. It was very hard. I liked it. I was happy to see something made that wasn’t just cheap entertainment.

SD: As a German artist, what did you think of the decision to have British artist Liam Gillick in Germany’s pavilion in the Venice Biennale this year?

GR: I haven’t seen it, but I think it’s awful. So politically correct. It makes no sense at all. Stupid.

SD: Why did you decide to make a print based on the September painting?

GR: I do this sometimes. Initially it comes from wanting to have something for me; I take a photograph of a painting just to have it. Then it becomes interesting how different it is from the original. It’s not only a reproduction. It’s different from the painting and has its own qualities.

SD: I understand the incidents of September 11, 2001, coincided with an exhibition of yours at this gallery.

GR: Yes. So this has sentimental value, because I had an opening here on September 13, 2001. And I couldn’t be here. And here on this wall, where the print now hangs, there were gray paintings, and they looked like photographs of the dust from the towers. And people told me these paintings look like they have so much to do with what happened.

SD: Which was, of course, accidental.

GR: Yes. And so for sentimental reasons, this print is here in honor. Dedicated to that time.

[read full interview]