"I was like a gravedigger while I painted these corpses [of the dead Baader-Meinhoff members]. It was just work. If I felt one of them looked too theatrical, I painted over it.. .I was afraid more of the reaction on the left than the right. It was still very dangerous to deal with this subject in Germany. There was fear that the museum where I showed them might be bombed. All my friends were on the left, but I was not. They said: 'Someone with the right mentality could do this, but not Richter - he is too bourgeois. He steals Baader-Meinhof away from us.' To me, they were part of the problem. I was standing outside watching how people, on both sides [left / right], ignored the truth because of their beliefs, beliefs that made them crazy. That was the point of the pictures."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
In 1988, Richter painted a series of 15 works titled 'October 18, 1977.' It shocked Germany, especially left. The series was based on photographs of the anti-capitalist Baader-Meinhof group, which called itself the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction) and were in prison and died in 1977.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerhard_Richter
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they do not look ar…"
"As far as the surface is concerned – oil on canvas, conventionally applied – my pictures have little to do with the o…"
"Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is li…"
"Since there is no such thing as absolute rightness and truth, we always pursue the artificial, leading, human truth. …"
"This time the entire floor is covered with cut-up illustrated journals, a new tic and trick of mine (eight days now):…"
"Pop art is neither an American invention nor an import, yet the terms and names were coined in the US, where they wer…"
"I am primarily painting from photographs these days (from illustrated magazines but also from family photos), in a se…"
"Contact with like-minded painters – a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out …"
"Composition is a side issue. Its role in my selection of photographs is a negative one at best. By which I mean that …"
"Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: 'binding back', 'binding' to the u…"