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Painting Negation: Gerhard Richter's NegativesAuthor(s): Peter OsborneSource: October, Vol. 62 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 102-113Published by: MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778704

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7/17/2019 778704


Painting

Negation:

Gerhard

Richter's

Negatives*

PETER

OSBORNE

DAGUERREOTYPE-Will

take he

place

of

painting.

See

Photography.)

PHOTOGRAPHY-

Will

make

painting

obsolete.

See

Daguerreotype.)

-Gustave

Flaubert,

Dictionary

f

Received

deas

Of all the issuesraisedbyRichter'spaintings, erhapsthemost ntractable

is

that of

where to

place

them within

critical

history

f

contemporary

rt. For

it

is a

paradox

of

Richter's

work that

while it

derives

both its

force and its

modernity

rom he

consistency

f its

ddress to a

single problem-the

problem

of the

continuing possiblity

f

painting

as

a

historically ignificant

ctivity-it

is

precisely

this

consistency

hat

threatens o

cut it off

from

the

wider

history

of

which it

is a

part,

to

enclose it

within

he

horizon of

a

self-containedwill

to

paint

and

thereby,

mplicitly,

o block off

that

very

futurefor

painting

which t

might

therwise e

thought

o

have

opened

up.

There

is

something

xceptional,

somethinghistorically

xceptional,

about

Richter'swork

that has

yet

to

be

fully

clarified.And this s notbecause it avoids or is in anyway displaced fromthe

issues of

its

time,

but rather

because of

the

specific

form

and,

indeed,

the

peculiar

success f its

engagement

withthem.

Furthermore,

t

would

seem to

be

something

about the

particular

emporal

ogic

of

this

engagement-what

Ste-

fan

Germer

has described as its

"dialectical

mediation of

proximity

and

*

An

earlier version of

a

part

of

this

essay

was

published

in Art

and

Design,

"Profile

on

Contemporary

Painting,"

vol.

7,

no.

3/4

1992).

This

essay,

and

the

three

essays

on

Gerhard

Richter hat

follow,

erive from

talks

given

at

the

conference

"History,

Photography,Memory

n

the

Paintings

of

Gerhard

Richter" t

the Tate

Gallery, ondon, December 7, 1991. The conferencewasorganizedbyAndrewBenjaminand Peter

Osborne

in

conjunction

with

the

Richter

xhibition,

urated

by

Sean

Rainbird,

that

was

held

there

between

October

30, 1991,

and

January

12,

1992,

and it

was

sponsored by

the Tate

Gallery

and

the

Goethe-Institut,

ondon.




7/17/2019 778704


Gerhard

ichter.

lfa

Romeo.

1965.

r

als

sein

Vor-

'n

Stelle

er

ge.

alot

ie

Zeichen

bis 1500ccm

Jesenkt,

dabei

auf

12

Monate

n

1100

D

der

England

und

Einliter-Wagen

Cardinal,

Mor-

M)

begegnen.

for

die

Neu-

Fiat

hat

alien

n

ausgereiftes,

>laren zur Zu-

iufendes

Auto-

generellen

Ex-

orgesehen

und

I-

.

.I




7/17/2019 778704


104

OCTOBER

distance"'-that

imparts

to Richter's

paintings

heirbroader

meaning

as

sites

forthe

exploration

of the dilemmas intrinsic o

painting.

Richter's

paintings,

one

might

ay,

re

timely

nly

nsofar s

they

re

untimely; ntimely nly

nsofar

as

they merge

out

of

the

most

thorough

mmersion

n

the

artistic

roblems

of

their

day.

Foremost

mong

these

problems

s

the

continuing hallenge

to

paint-

ing,

of whatever

kind,

presentedby

the

power

of the

photographic mage.

In what

follows offer

preliminary

ttempt

t a

reconstruction f

the

art-historical

ogic

of Richter's

work as it

presents

tself

within he

conceptual

space

of a double

negation:

of

paintingby

photography

nd

photography y

painting.

n the

process

I

hope

to shed some

light

upon

the

ontological

tatus

of contemporary ainting nd to givean indication f thecontribution hat a

fuller

nalysis

of

Richter'swork has to

make to the

rethinking

f the

history

f

modernism.

Painting

s

a Means

for

Photography

The idea

that

photography

s a threat o

painting

s as old as

photography

itself;

s

old,

in

fact,

s

modernism.

Painting

fter

photography

has

been

dif-

ferent

from

painting

before.

Yet for all that

has

gone

between,

the

question

persists:

how to

paint, why

to

paint,

what to

paint,

"after

photography"?

Rich-

ter's worktakesup thisquestionat thebeginning f the 1960s at the moment

of

its second

major

historical

eprise,

the moment

of crisisof

the

hegemonic

project

in

postwar

American and

European

painting:

the

crisis

of modernist

abstraction.

Richter's

esponse

s

simple,

yet

mbivalent:

o return

o the source

of

the crisis

the

displacement

f

painting

from

ts naturalistic

epresentational

function)

nd

address

painting's

historical

osition

directly,

ot as

a

description,

but

as a task:

painting

after"

photography

s

painting

in

the

manner

of"

the

photograph;

painting

as

photo-painting.

Richter's

response

to

the recurrence

of the

crisis of

painting

was not to search

for new artistic

media,

to

seek to

expand

the

extension

of the term

rt-undoubtedly

the dominant

tendency

f

thetime-although he was involved n certainnotoriousFluxushappenings n

Diisseldorf

n 1963.

Rather,

t

was,

and

remains,

o

paint:

to seek

out new

ways

of

painting

hat void

the dual

pitfalls

f a redundant

figuration

nd the nflated

subjectivism,

dealism,

nd existential

weightlessness

f various

related

forms f

abstraction.

By

the

very

factof

continuing

o

paint,

Richter

et himself

gainst

the

more radical

artistic

and

anti-artistic)

mpulses

of

his

day.

The use

of

photographs

s the

source,

basis,

or

subject

of

paintings

per-

forms number

of

different unctions

n Richter's

arly

work.

n

the first

lace,

the

objectivity

r

givenness

of the

photographic

mage

is used to counter the

1. Stefan

Germer,

"Unbidden

Memories,"

n Gerhard ichter:

8. Oktober

977,

trans.

Daniel

Anthony

ezzi,

Julia

Bernard,

and

Shaun

Whiteside

London:

Institute

f

Contemporary

Art

in

association

with

Anthony

d'Offay

Gallery,

1989),

p.

7.




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MV--- I

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NP

7--~

rror

%**111

1W

tam

*

TACT

31-P$

Ibr

.............."~"

P"NL~ ~t

L llllll

perceived subjectivism

f

painting

t

two

distinct evels:

extrinsically,y

taking

away

the

responsibility

or the

representational

ontentfromthe

painting

nd

displacing

t onto the

photography,

nd

intrinsically,

y thereby

redetermining

thecompositionalformof thepicture nd reducing tsrepresentationalaskto

that

of

the

apparent replication

or

simple reproduction

of the

mechanically

produced image,

in

painterly

mimicry

f

the

aspiration

to

objectivity

f the

naturalistic

epresentational

unction

tself,

surped

by

photography

from an

older

tradition

n

painting.

At this

evel,

such

painting

may

be seen to function

as

a

quasi-photographic eproduction

f

photography,

nsofar s

photography

has here become

the

paradigm

or

model for the

"objective"

eproduction

f

an

image.

In this

respect,

the

early photo-paintingsmay

be

seen to

partake

fully

in

the

recognition

f the historical

negation

of

paintingby photography,

while

refusing

both the

orthodox modernist

response

of an

affirmative ithdrawal

intopainterly utonomythroughabstractionbe it in the name of spiritual r

"pure

painterly"

alues)

and

the more

radical

avant-gardist

ejection

f

painting

Gerhard

ichter.

ityscape,

Madrid.

1968.




7/17/2019 778704


106

OCTOBER

altogether

the

readymade).Photo-painting,

ne

might ay,

s

an

affirmationf

photography

y

ainting.2

It would be

a

mistake,

herefore,

o see

Richter's

hoto-paintings

s

paint-

erly representations

f

objects

that use

photographs

imply

s models or me-

diating

forms o secure the

objectivity

f the

image.

Rather,

hey

re

paintings

of

photographs

that

produce

the

inevitable

ide effect f

a

doubly

distanced

reference o the

object-a secondary

function he secondariness

hat

s

initially

signified

y

the

occasional

inclusionof textwithin

he

picture

or

by

some other

manipulation

of the

picture

frame.3

At

the same

time,however,

his

doubling

of

the distance

of the

painting

from

he "real"

object

n the

photograph

hould

not be taken to signifyome primacy f formover content, ome purelyfor-

malist

play

with modes of

representation,

ince the "content"here is

the

pho-

tograph

tself-both

the

particular hotograph

nd,

through

t,

the

practice

of

photography,

n

all the

richness,

epth,

and

range

of

its

cultural

reference.4

2.

This does not

make

it an

"updating"

of the

readymade

n reaction o its

reification,

s claimed

by

Germer.

See

Stefan

Germer,

Retrospective

head,"

in

Gerhard

ichter,

d. Sean Rainbird

and

Judith

everne

London:

Tate

Gallery,

9911,

p.

25-26,

which

follows

enjamin

Buchloh,

'Ready-

made,'

photographie

et

peinture

dans

la

peinture

de Gerhard

Richter,"

n Gerhard

ichter

Paris,

1977],

pp.

11-58.)

Reification

s the

point

of the

readymade.

The

problem

t faces over time

s not

reification,

ut

routinization:

he

dissipation

of the

negativity

f

the

strategy

f

pure

nomination

overtime.Nor shouldRichter's

hoto-paintings

e confusedwith ither

photorealism

the

adoption

of

a certain

photographic

opticality

s a

visual

ideal)

or Warhol's

silkscreen

aintings,

with

which

they

are

often

compared

(although

they

are

obviously

related).

Photo-painting cknowledges

the

historical

mport

f the

readymade

nsofar

s the

photographs

pon

which

t s based are

readymade

pictures,

he

images

of

which re

raised to the

power

of

art,

n

part,

by

their election

by

the artist

as

the basis

for

paintings.

But this does

not so much

"update"

the

readymade

as

regress

t to

the

status

of an

artisticmaterial.

For

it

is

no mere

nomination

here that renders

the

photographic

image

"art,"

but

its transformation

nto a

traditional

rtisticmedium

painting).

f

anything,

hoto-

painting

thus

passes

an

ironic comment

on

the

failure

of the

readymade

to

secure

itself

future

independent

of the

model

from which

it derived

(photography).

For

an

interpretation

f the

readymade

as a

"delayed

action"

of

photography,

ee

Thierry

de

Duve,

"A

propos

du

readymade,"

Parachute

7

(Spring

1977),

pp.

19-22.

As

will

be

clear from

what

follows,

his

piece

is

greatly

indebted

to

Germer's

ssay

forthe

stimulation

t

provided

to

clarify

he

philosophical

ssues

at stake

in the relationsbetween

painting,

hotography,

nd the

readymade

n Richter'swork.

3.

See,

for

example,

Folding

Clothes

orse

1962)

and

Alfa

Romeo

1965),

both of which

were

exhibited

t the recent

Pop

Art Show

at the

Royal

Academy

n London

(see

Pop

Art

London:

Royal

Academy

of

Arts,

1991],

pp.

191

&

193),

where

they

were

generally

reated

by

reviewers

f the

exhibition

s

poor

continental

mitations f

a

quintessentially

nglo-American

orm.Richter

himself

must

shoulder

some

of the blame

for such

misreadings,

having

declared

himself German

Pop

artist

while n

Paris

in

1963-in

part

in a

spirit

f ironic reversal

in

tune

withthe

coining

of

the

phrase "capitalist

ealism"

o

describe

the

"Living

with

Pop"

event

t

a furniture

tore n

Diisseldorf

in

October

of the

same

year)

and

in

part,

one

suspects,

s a

marketing

trategy

hat

misfired

nce

he

moved

away

from his

tyle

f

photo-painting,

ince

t

mpeded

recognition

f the

continuity

f

his

project.

With

the

increasingly

ationalistic

marketing

f German

art

in the international

rt

world

in

the 1970s

and

'80s,

the

inappropriate

abel

of

"German

Pop"

was one

that stuck.

Richter

would

have to

wait until

the

late

1980s

for

anythng

pproaching

the international

eputation

accorded his German peers,bywhich timehis turnto large-scale bstraction ad introducednew

ambiguities

nto his

work thatenabled

it to

be

read

(and

misread)

within

uite

different,

nd

more

traditional,

erms.

4. It

does

not seem

irrelevant,

or

example,

that

many

of

the

early photo-paintings

re

of




7/17/2019 778704


Painting

Negation:

Gerhard

ichter's

egatives

107

The

purpose

of these

paintings,

Richterhas

maintained,

was

not to

use

photography

as a means for

painting,

but "to use

painting

as a means for

photography"5--as

a

means,

one

might

ay,

for the

interrogation

f the

photo-

graph

as a cultural

form,

ven

perhaps, paradoxically,

or its elevation.

hoto-

painting

acts

to

add a

moment of

cognitive

reflection,

f

historical nd

repre-

sentational

elf-consciousness,

o the

experience

of

the

photographic

mage.

It

creates

a

space

and a time

for reflection

pon

that

mage

which s

qualitatively

different rom

that

of

the

photograph

tself,

haunted as such

experience

is

by

the

trace of the

object.

Every

photograph,

Barthes

has

argued,

is

"a

certificate

of

presence":

the

presence

of

the

past

within

he

present.6

very

photo-painting

is also a certificate f presence,butof anotherkind: the resence fthephotograph

in

representation.

his is

a

presence

that

can

only

be

marked

beyond

the

photo-

graph

itself,

y

a

different

epresentational

orm.

t

is

this

presence

of

photog-

raphy

within

the

paintings

that,

to

return to

Germer's

phrase

quoted

above,

establishes them

as a

"mediation of

proximity

nd

distance":

proximity

nd

distance

to

the

photograph

the

presence

of the

past

within

he

present),

prox-

imity

nd distance to

history

the

social

power

of

the

photographic

mage).

It is

this

dialectical

mediation,

n

turn,

that makes

photo-painting

n

some

way

em-

blematicof

the

dilemma of

contemporary

ainting:

the

dilemma of

its

relation

to

the

history

f

its

negation.

Photo-paintings an affirmation fphotography ypainting.Yet it s also,

thereby,

form

of

painting:

an

affirmation f

painting

n

the

face of

photog-

raphy.

For

all their

acknowledgment

f

the

hegemony

of

photography

as

a

means of

image

production,

for all

their

participation

n

the

negation

of

paint-

ing's

function

of

naturalistic

epresentation

by

photography,

Richter's

photo-

paintings

emain,

nsistently,

aintings.

f

the

use of

photographs

s

the

subjects

of

the

paintings,

long

with

the

quasi-photographic

spects

of

their

form,

ig-

nifies

recognition

f

the

historical

negation

of

paintingby

photography,

uch

pictures

nonetheless nact

a

painterly

egation

f

this

negation,

reappropriation

of

photography by

painting,

that would

seem to

seek

to

rescue

painting,

as

photo-painting, rom ts fallenposition-however little hismayhave been the

original

ntent f

these

pictures.

The

question

thus

arises

as to the

meaning

of

women,

or

that

these women

have often

been

the

subjects

of

violent

deaths.

The

point

s

illustrated

by

the

following

works:

Lovers

n a

Forest

1966),

Emma

1966),

Helga

Matura

1966),

Student

1967),

Olympia

1967),

Eight

Student urses

1971),

Portrait

f

a

Young

Woman

1988),

Confrontation

1988),

Dead

(1988).

The

idea

of

an

intrinsic

onnection

between

photography,

eath,

and

identity,

stab-

lished

by

the

temporality

or

extratemporality)

eculiar

to

the

photographic

mage,

has been

central

to much

recent

work on

photography.

ee in

particular

Roland

Barthes,

Camera

Lucida:

Reflections

on

Photography

1980),

trans.

Richard

Howard

(London:

Fontana,

1984)

and

Philippe

Dubois,

L'acte

photographique

Paris:

Nathan and

Labor,

1983).

5. Rolf Schon, "InterviewwithGerhard Richter," n GerhardRichter: 6. Biennaledi Venezia

(Essen:

Museum

Folkwang,

1972),

p.

23,

quoted

by

Roald

Nasgaard,

Gerhard

Richter

aintings

(London:

Thames and

Hudson,

1988),

p.

47.

6.

Barthes,

Camera

Lucida,

pp.

87-88.




7/17/2019 778704


108 OCTOBER

thisdouble

negation,

f

paintingby photography

nd

photography

y

painting.

What kind f

painting

does it

begin?

Negating

he

Negation

Philosophically,

ne can

distinguish

t least three

quite

different

ersions

of the

idea

of a double

negation.

First,

here s the mathematicalmodel of the

double

negative

as a return to the

starting

oint,

with the second

negation

a

literalcancellation

of the first.

According

to this

model,

the essentialnature of

painting

as

an art form would be uneffected

by

the

mediating

role of the

photographic mage. This is, however, n ahistorical nd therefore ntenable

position.

Secondly,

there is the

Hegelian

model

of

double

negation

as

super-

session

Aufhebung):

he

transcendence,

reservation,

nd hence

transfiguration

of

the relation

established

by

the first

egation,

s

it

is viewed as

an

aspect

or

moment

of a wider

process

driven

by

the successive

production

nd resolution

of contradictions.

his is double

negation

as a

new

beginning

t a

higher

con-

ceptual

level.7

In this

case,

we would be

talking

bout

a

qualitative

transfor-

mation

in

the

meaning

of

painting,

new

positivity,

hich would

begin

the

history

f

painting

new.8

This

is the

strongest

istorical laim

that an

be made

for Richter's

work: that t

begins

painting

new. Yet one should be

wary

of it.

For it carriesthe burden of a certaintriumphantalism,lmostwhollyforeign

to the restlessness

nd

skepticism

f

so

much of Richter's

work,

n which the

riskof

experimentation

emains

open,

as it

must,

o the

possibility

indeed,

the

necessity)

f

failure;

n

which,

n

fact,

t one

level,

success

success

n

painting)

is at risk

of

becoming

the

greatest

ailure t

all. More

generally,

uch

a

position

attributes o

painting

the

capacity

to

overcome,

by

itself,

he contradictions

f

its historical

ituation,

o raise itself

bove them and

simplypaint

them

away.

Any

such

capacity

would obliterate

he tension

n

Richter's

work-the historical

tension

hat

gives

t ts

deeper

meaning

nd

wider ultural esonance-in

return

for a

merely

ffirmative

rt.9

Finally, here s thatnotionof a doublenegationwhichplacesitself etween

these two

conceptions,

n

the name

of

giving

dialectics materialist

urn:

Ador-

no's

conception

of a

negative

dialectic

n

which he second

negation,

ather han

either

returning

s to

our

starting oint

painting

s

it was

prior

to its relation

to

photography)

r

reconstituting

he

identity

f each term

painting

nd

pho-

7.

Hegel's

Logic:

Being

Part One

of

he

ncyclopedia

f

he

hilosophical

ciences

1830),

trans.

William

Wallace

(Oxford:

Oxford

University

ress,

1975),

p.

142.

8.

Germer,

Retrospective

Ahead,"

p.

24.

9.

Herbert

Marcuse,

"The

Affirmative

haracter

of Culture"

(1937),

in

Negations: ssays

n

CriticalTheoryBoston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 88-133. To assertsuch a capacitywould also, of

course,

be a

betrayal

of

the

totalizing erspective

f

Hegel's thought

n

the

name of a

schematic

application

of his

logic

to the

understanding

f a

particular

ultural

sphere.

It would be

to

treat

painting

s a

self-sufficient

orm.




7/17/2019 778704


tography)

from

the

standpoint

of

a

new,

"higher," positivity

the

Hegelian

reading),

marks

ime,

wells on the

reciprocal

negativity

f the

nonidentity

f

the

two

terms,

nd

finds

here,

within he

determinacy

f

theirmutual

negation,

the

utopian

shadow

of the

reconciliationt s denied. "What s

negated,"

Adorno

writes,

is

negative,

until t has

passed.

This is

the decisive

break with

Hegel.""'

On

this

reading,

Richter's

paintings

are

"negatives": negatives

of

paintings,

negatives

of

photographs.

t

is this

position

that want to defend.

Richter'spaintingsstand to the history f paintingas enactmentsof a

double

negation

n which

he

second

negation

the

negation

of

photography y

photo-painting)

matches and reinforces he first

the

negation

of

painting

by

photography)

without ither

being superseded.

It is

a kind of stalemate that

points

beyond

itself

nly

negatively,

n

the form

of

a

hope:

the

hope, perhaps,

for a labor

beyond

the

alienationof

craft,

onception,

nd

technology.

Richter

may,

ike

others,

paint

after the

purported

end of

painting,

n

the self-con-

10. Theodor W.

Adorno,

Negative

ialectics,

rans.E. B.

Ashton

London:

Routledge

and

Kegan

Paul, 1973), p.

160.

See

Hegel's

claim that

"reality

tself

s

only

n

so far as it

is still

onfronted

ya

being

which

it

has

not

sublated,"

in

Hegel's

Science

of Logic

(1812;

1831),

trans.A. V. Miller

(London:

Allen

and

Unwin,

1969),

p.

113.

Gerhard

Richter.

Skull. 1983.




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110

OCTOBER

sciousness

of that

purported

end,

but

he

does

not

thereby egin

painting

new

so much as

keep

t alive n the

steady,

uncertain tate that t has

gotten

nto,

by

exploring

the state

within

painting

tself.

n

painting

he

negation

of

painting,

however,

Richter annot

but

paint

enact)

another

negation

s

well: the

negation

of that

negation

by

painting.

His

pictures

are thus double

negatives,

cts of

negation

n

which,

s

Hegel

puts

it,

"posited

as

affirmative,"

egation

becomes

determinate."

If Richter's

paintings

re

philosophical xplorations

n

paint

of

the state

of

contemporary ainting,

hen

they

do

not so much transcendthis

state as

register

t,

mmanently,

n

a series

of diverse and innovative

ways.

t

is

from this stance-at

least

up

until the late

1970s,

when there

is a

definite

change in the balance of Richter'swork-that the paintings acquire their

strangely

istanced

melancholy uality.

Furthermore,

he

gray

paintings

nd

constructive

works,

would

suggest,

tand

in

the same

relation to

other,

elf-

negating

episodes

in the

history

f

painting

as

the

photo-paintings

tand

to

photography.)

Richter's

paintings

mark

time,

he historical

ime of their

production,

he

time

of the crisis

of

painting,

and

they

mark

time with

paint.

Reflectively

exploring

he sources

and dimensions

f this risis

hrough

heir cts

of

painterly

appropriation,

they

cannot

but contest

t,

even as

they

confirm

t;

cannot

but

confirm

t

n the

very

ct of their

ontestation.

et this s

not to

say

that

Richter,

through unning,merelypostponesa predeterminednd topainting."Rather,

it is the

interpretation

f

negation

as an end

(finis)

hat

the

paintings

ontest.

"What is

negated

is

negative

until t has

passed."

What,

then,

s the status

of

this

negative

painting,

his

painting

hat

keeps

painting

live,

marking

ime;

this

painting

that,

s Germer

puts

it,

however

much

it

may

seem

to

begin painting

anew,

"can

only

take

place

on an individual

basis and

in a

purely

ntellectual

sense"?'3

What

is

the

force of these

qualifications?

t

is

at this

point

that

it

becomes

necessary

o

return o

the

question

of the

readymade.

Postconceptualainting

The effect

f the

readymade

on the

concept

of art

cannot be

denied. "For

more than

thirty-five

ears,

what

has been

most

significant

n modern art

has

worked at

the

interpretation

f the

readymade's

resonance,

ometimes

hrough

compulsive

repetition,

ometimes

through

violent

denial,

but also sometimes

through

a

meaningful

rethinking

f

it,

and

in

any

case,

always through

a

recognition

even

if

only

an

implicit

ne)."'4

It is

harder,

however,

o

specify

the

precise

modality

of this effect

n

different

laces

at

different

imes,

and

11.

Ibid.

12. Germer, RetrospectiveAhead," p. 24.

13.

Ibid.,

p.

25.

14.

Thierry

de

Duve,

Pictorial

ominalism:

n

Marcel

Duchamp's

assage

rom

ainting

othe

Ready-

made

1984),

trans.

Dana

Polan

(Minneapolis:

University

f Minnesota

Press,

1991),

p.

188.




7/17/2019 778704


PaintingNegation:

Gerhard ichter's

egatives

111

especially

with

regard

to

painting.

As de Duve has

brilliantly

hown,

the

effect

of the

readymade

on the

concept

of

painting

wasthe ntroduction f a

profound

undecidability.

n

"naming

as

a

possible

painting thing

that t s

impossible

to

name a

painting,"

he

readymade

seemed to

break the bond

that tied

the

name

of

painting

to the

history

f its

craft,

rendering

t

radically

undecidable.'5

It

would be a

mistake,

however,

to conflate

the

undecidability

produced

by

a

particular

rt within

particular

historical

onjuncture

withthe

logically

onsti-

tutive

undecidability

f the

idea of a

pure

nomination-however

closely

the

two

may

be

linked

in

the

conjuncture

n

question.

For

while

the

readymade

may

"speak

of

the

conditionsforthe

survival f

painting

n

a

society

hat

renders

its

craft

mpossible" (namely,that it sever its links withthe craftcompletely)

while

simultaneously

egistering

he

mpossibility

f

any

such

survival

since

the

name

painting

would

"no

longer designate

anything

but

the

exhaustion

of its

own

naming"),16

the

undecidability

hat

it

thereby

ntroduces nto

the

name

painting

s

not left

unaffected

by

the

act of

its

introduction.

The

readymade

workson

the conditions

hat t

both

establishes

nd

articulates.As

such,

despite

all

appearances

(indeed,

despite

its own

explicit

logic),

it

does

not,

in

fact,

demonstrate

the

impossibility

f

painting-or

even its

absolute

undecidability

-so

much as

serve to

delimit

ts

possibilities,

y

negation.

By

carrying

he

logic

of

the

painterly

vant-garde

the

successive

bandonment of

craft-specific

on-

ventions) to its absurd conclusion (the abandonment of all conventionsand

hence

the

establishment

f an

absolute

conventionality

f

pure

nomination),

it

grants

painting,

which t

names

and

does not

name,

an

open-ended reprieve."'7

Painting

s

not

impossible.

Only

the

old

conception

of

painting

s

impossible:

impossible

to

ustify.

Nor is its

signifier

ndecidable,

except

in

the

vacuum

of a

purely

logical space,

outside

of

history.

Rather,

t is

the

undecidability

f the

readymade

that

establishes

the

terrain

f the

decidability

f

painting by

estab-

lishing

a

divide

(an

ontological

divide)

between

painting

before

and

after

the

readymade.

Henceforth,

ll

paintingworthy

f

the

name

will

have to

legitimate

itself

conceptually

s art

over,

above,

and

beyond

the

continuity

f

its

relation

to the history f itscraftby incorporating consciousnessof the crisisof that

history

nto its

modes

of

signification,

nto

its

strategic

eployment

of

craft.

All

painting

that

aspires

to art

must

be

postconceptual.

t is

within

he

terms f

this

idea of

postconceptual

painting

that

Richter's

strategy

f

double

negation

is to

be

understood

and

judged.

Photo-painting

s

one

way

of

painting

after

the

readymade

that

incorpo-

rates

a

consciousness

of the

crisis

of

painting

nto

its

constitutive

rocedures-

procedures

which,

while

they may

be tied

to

the

history

f

the

craft

through

technique,

derive

both

their

extrinsic

rationale

and

intrinsic

ogic

from

their

15.

Ibid.,

pp.

163,

157.

16.

Ibid.,

pp.

155,

158.

17.

Ibid.,

p.

162.




7/17/2019 778704


112

OCTOBER

critical

eflection n the

concept

f

painting

tself.

f

painting

fter he

readymade

must

reestablish relation to its

craft,

his

s

nonetheless

only

a

condition

for

its tatus s

painting,

ot for ts tatus s art. t is in thedialectic fthese elements

(concept

and

craft),

dialectic

of

proximity

nd

distance

to

painting),

hat the

conundrum of

Richter's

xceptionalism

onnects

up

to the

alleged individuality

and

intellectualism

f

his

project.

Richter's

work,

suggested,

s

exceptional,

not

because it s

displaced

from

he field

f

contemporary

rt,

but

rather

because

of

the

peculiar

way

in

which t

seems

to

distance itselffrom this

field

by

the

very

success

of

its

strategy

f

dealing

with

t. Yet is this

supposed "exception-

alism"

really

nything

ifferent rom

he individualism nd

intellectualismhat

Germer

associates with he

project

of

continuing

o

paint

at

all?

Both the individualism nd

the intellectualism f

contemporary ainting

carry

he

weight

f a

historical ondition. f

the crisis f

painting

s the condition

within

which ll

painting

worth

he name must

ocate

itself,

nd

from

which

no

:i i'

i:s

i

:?i~f:Ck~':l~;~i3CC-~1B~-~B~?

I

r isSi~Q~tfa~II

ntt ,, ? i

ii

I~ re I

E

I:

i-i '.u''

::

iti; ,?.

_1

Gerhard

ichter.

ran

2

(Abstract

Painting).

1989.




7/17/2019 778704


Painting

Negation:

Gerhard

ichter's

egatives

113

painting

worth

the name can

escape

(since

it is a

socially

and

technologically

based crisis n its collective ulturalfunction), his not

only

necessitates hat all

attempts

o

negotiate

this crisisbe individual

n

character,

ut

it also attests o

the

symptomatic

ignificance

f

such

individuality.

ymptomaticndividuality

ur-

passes

itself

when raised to the

power

of a historical

representation,

hrough

interpretation.

et what

I

am

calling

Richter's

xceptionalism

xceeds a

merely

symptomatic onception

of

representative

ndividualism.

or it derives from

he

success of his

particular

rtistic

trategy

double

negation)

a success

that

every-

where

courts a

certain

failure: that

point

at which

the

reestablishment f the

connection to craftwould

negate

the

conceptual

tension

n

whose

service t is

enacted--the restoration fbeauty.

Richter'swork s

exceptional,

historically

xceptional,

n

that t s

produced

at

the

point

of a contradiction hat it

endlessly

and

systematically)

mediates,

that

t

can never

resolve,

but

which,

n

the

self-consciousness f

this

mpossibility,

it is

thereby

ble to

render determinate:

contradiction

etween the end of

painting

s a

living

form f

collective

epresentation

nd its

continuationwithin

the art institution n

the basis of a serial

ingenuity

hat,

symptomatic

n

its

individuality,

arriesthe

weight

f a historical

ondition.

Richter

dopts

a

variety

of

strategies

o

make

painting

ut of the

self-consciousness f this

ontradiction,

and

he

produces

a

variety

f

formsof

painting.

Yet each

derives its

meaning

and its mportancefromthiscommoncondition, nd fromthewayin which t

is

taken

up, replayed,

and

affirmedwithinthe

work,

within

the

very

act of

painting.

Posited

as

affirmative,

egation

becomes

determinate.

The doubt that

lingers

concerns the

extent to which the

latest works

the

abstracts)

maintain

the tension

produced by

such a

double

negativity,

he

moment of

historical

reflexivity,

nd the

extent

to which

this s

annihilatedor

suppressed

in

a

merely

affirmative

elebrationof the

possibilities

f

paint.'8

18. For the beginningsof a critiqueof Richter's bstracts long these lines,emphasizingtheir

vulnerability

o their

conditionsof

reception,

ee the final

ection of

my

"Modernism,

Abstraction

and the

Return to

Painting,"

n

Thinking

rt:

Beyond

raditional

esthetics,

d. Andrew

Benjamin

and

Peter

Osborne

(London:

Institute f

Contemporary

Art,

1991),

p.

70-76.

778704

Documents

jstor terms

richters paintings

jstor archive

utcyour use

contemporary painting

place of painting

paintings of gerhard

terms conditions of