Splodgenessabound?:Gerhard Richter @ David Zwirner.

Gerhard Richter is ninety-two years old, he's been a celebrated artist since before I was born (and I'm no spring chicken - see end of this blog), he's sold work for world record prices, and he's been critically acclaimed time and time again. He is, there can be little doubt, one of the few living stars of the art world. Off the top of my head, the only other living artist I can think of that compares to him in terms of respect is David Hockney.

 

So it feels like sacrilege, of sorts, to say that his recent exhibition at David Zwirner in London's Mayfair was underwhelming. Very underwhelming. Richter's done good stuff, some of his photorealist work - including the image that Sonic Youth used for their Daydream Nation LP - is amazing and some of the abstract work is very good too.

There's a couple of examples of those at David Zwirner but, sadly, there is a lot of very weak stuff too. Only some of them are named and one that isn't is the one that heads up this blog. It's a, cliche alert, 'riot of colour' and I found it very pleasing to the eye. I couldn't, I'm afraid, say the same for the washy, or wishy-washy, paintings below.

Abstraktes Bild, Juist (2011)

There just doesn't seem to be a lot of effort, or thought, gone into them - even though, I suspect, there is a great deal of effort and thought that has gone into them. I'm sure in Richter's head, and in the head of his admirers, these works are sublime and say something about the human condition but to me they're just abstract scrawls - and, unlike other abstract scrawls, they're not particularly interesting to look at.

Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting (2006)

For me, the black and white (or the inky blue) ones are even more disappointing as they don't even give me the satisfaction of enjoying bright and boisterous colours. There's a section of what appear to be cut-ups which remind me, a bit, of late Matisse. Though they don't have the spontaneity, or the joy, of Henri Matisse.

The 'Strip' paintings are the best to witness in situ. Because they're big, mainly. I stood close to them so I was engulfed by the imagery, like people do when they encounter monumental Rothko works. They looked good but I was not transported into another realm and I did not feel some powerful sense of calm or awe. Instead I thought about the design of deck-chairs.

15.3.2023 (2023)

Strip (2013/16)

Strip (2013/16)

20.5.2023 (2023)

There's some more inky/washy works and some of them are, I must admit, not horrible. There are shades of green and blue, turquoise, that appeal to my aesthetic tastes and, in some places, they almost look like old rocks or fossils that I may once have pondered in the Natural History Museum.

One thing I hadn't planned on pondering during my gallery visit was my own mortality. But Richter, as you may expect from a nonagenarian, has a few memento moris on show. They are mirror pieces with skulls, a nod to Holbein's Ambassadors perhaps, barely perceptible on the surface. You can see them when you're there but take a photo and they disappear. All I was left with was my gormless fizzog staring back haplessly which, I suppose, makes for a far more disturbing reminder of mortality.

I'm sure that some time soon there will be a better, more comprehensive, Richter show in London so that we can see what it is that made him such a force in the modern art world. This show, beyond doubt, was not it. I walked out into the rain and soon the patterns on my jacket were not dissimilar to one of Richter's works. I had become art.