May 8, 2016

Gerhard Richter is a contemporary German artist known worldwide for his paintings. While some of his abstract paintings sell for over twenty million dollars, it was not until after watching his documentary, Gerhard Richter Painting, that I fully understood the value in abstract painting. Around this same time, I met Lyz Wendland (another abstract painter) and took a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Together, these events redefined how I thought about art.

Upon looking at Richter’s paintings, I struggled to see how something so simple could be so valuable, so inherently “good”. It seemed like they were slopped together. After seeing his process, though, I was forced to rethink everything I thought I knew about art. Every assumption I had regarding the lack of value in sloppy abstract paintings was overturned as I realized that the perception of ease was completely unrelated to the process itself.

First, a layer of color is applied to the huge canvas, typically an assortment of three colors in a non-objective abstract layout. After that dries a bit, an enormous squeegee is painted with a thick layer of a single color of paint. This is applied to the canvas, starting at one end. The squeegee is gradually dragged across the surface of the canvas, lightly enough that the squeegee skips over places, leaving a rustic underpainting partially exposed.

I thought that was the end of it, and even the length of that process had surprised me. I was wrong.

Another squeegeed layer was applied, this time perpendicular to the last. Then another layer, and another, and it went on. The painting was left for a period of days while it underwent a test of the eye. If it lost its charm after that, it would be painted over entirely.

The result was something that astonished me: a piece with a certain quality that none of my work has ever had in my eye. These paintings had a soul. I’m not sure where it came from, but I am determined to revise my thoughts and process until my own work possesses this quality.

It’s like polishing a stone until it shines in the light—every piece of art has a soul. It’s up to the artist to find a way to bring it to the surface.