cultureAUGUST09
6
A different
Another of the worlds leading artists is to exhibit in the
North East. David Whetstone offers a taster.
O
ne of the great names in
contemporary art is that of
Gerhard Richter, cited as
an influence by many
young � and even not so young �
artists.
In August, at mima � the Middles-
brough Institute of Modern Art � we
will get the chance to see some of his
prodigious output at close quarters.
The exhibition Modern Times will
offer a range of his work in four
rooms.
Room One will be devoted to an
installation of monochrome and ab-
stract works. You will see yourself in
them for they are reflective, bearing
titles such as Eckspiegel, braun-blau
(Corner mirror, brown-blue) and Eck-
spiegel, gruen-rot (Corner mirror,
green-red). They date from 1991.
In Room Two will be Two Sculp-
tures for a Room by Palermo. Con-
fusingly, this is one work comprising
two plaster heads covered with grey
oil paint. One is a self-portrait and the
other is a portrait of another German
artist, Blinky Palermo.
It was made in 1971 and is said to
be one of the most frequently referred
to works by the artist. Adding to the
sense of anticipation, the piece has
rarely been seen.
Room Three will show a selection
of the abstract paintings for which,
arguably, Richter is best known.
Room Four, meanwhile, will contain a
series of 30 rarely seen drawings.
Gerhard Richter was born in
Dresden in 1932, a time of turmoil in
Germany. It is said that an uncle, a
young Nazi officer, died in the war
while his mentally disabled aunt was
imprisoned in a euthanasia camp.
It has been suggested that his early
experiences turned him against the
notion of ideology and helped to
shape his artistic vision. He determ-
ined to become an artist in his teens,
supportedbyhismother,andenrolled
at the Dresden Art Academy in what
had then become Communist East
Germany.
Just months before the Berlin Wall
went up, he escaped with his wife to
D�sseldorf in West Germany. They
had only one suitcase between
them.
Richter has been credited with giv-
ing new life to painting when many of
his contemporaries were turning to
performance art or using found ma-
terials. His ideas were challenging,
Portrait Gallery in London states:
"Using photographs as the basis for
paintings freed him from conventional
artistic processes involving the cre-
ation of motifs, colour, composition
and expression."
During the 1970s Richter started to
accrue honours and prizes. He rep-
resented Germany at the prestigious
Venice Biennale in 1972 and his work
has found favour year after year at the
equally influential Documenta exhib-
ition in Kassel.
The artist currently lives in Cologne
where he was commissioned to
design a stained glass window for the
cathedral.
In the past year his work has been
the subject of exhibitions at the Royal
Academy in Edinburgh and in London
at the aforementioned National Por-
trait Gallery and at the Serpentine
Gallery.
The Modern Times exhibition
draws heavily on Artist Rooms, a new
collection of international contem-
porary art given at cost price to
National Galleries of Scotland and the
Tate by the art dealer Antony
d'Offay.
The gesture made a vast array of
20th and 21st Century art available to
galleries around the country with the
title Artist Rooms reflecting the
d'Offay custom of devoting whole
rooms to the work of a favoured
artist.
Throughout this year, thanks to
charity The Art Fund and (in Scotland)
the Scottish Parliament, 18 museums
and galleries across the country are
showing more than 30 Artist Rooms.
Modern Times can be seen at
mima, Centre Square, Middles-
brough, from August 28 to Novem-
ber 15. Go to www.visitmima.com
for full gallery listings or call (01642)
726720.
perspective
Gerhard Richter's
Self-Portrait
Standing, Three
Times, 1991, main;
11 Schieben (886-
5), 2004, right;
Untitled, 1985,
inset left.
refreshing and contemporary.
He sought to escape what he
viewed as the strictures of art his-
tory.
With a few like-minded friends, he
formed a satirical group called the
Capitalist Realists who drew their
subject matter from newspapers.
Inevitably he drew others to him,
yet he would tease those who tried to
pin him down, declaring: "I believe in
nothing".
His first solo exhibition was in D�s-
seldorf in 1963 and it comprised
portrait paintings based on photo-
graphs. The camera never lies, they
say, yet Richter's photo-inspired
paintings are blurred and their precise
subject matter is always a fraction out
of reach.
An essay accompanying a recent
exhibition of this work at the National
art

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