Details

Title

Abstract Painting (849-2)

Artist/Maker

Gerhard Richter (German, born 1932)

Date

1997

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

102 3/8 × 133 7/8 inches

Credit

Purchase with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton, Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable

Accession #

1999.39

On View

Currently not on view

In Abstract Painting (849 2) it is clear that Richter’s approach to abstract painting emphasizes a process of alternate generation and destruction in which chance plays a vital role. Tension between this binary of construction and deconstruction imbues Abstract Painting (849 2) with a somewhat brusque, casual, and mechanical feel. Richter remarks, “Any thoughts on my part about the ‘construction’ of a picture are false, and if the execution works, this is only because I partly destroy it, because it works in spite of everything—by not jarring and by not looking the way I planned.”

Image Copyright

© Gerhard Richter

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