Gerhard Richter: Landscapes [Hardcover]

Gerhard Richter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2004

Nine landscape paintings spanning over 30 years of Gerhard Richteris career are presented in this exhibition catalogue by Zwirner & Wirth gallery in New York. As Richter once stated, iFor me there is no difference between a landscape and an abstract painting . . . I refuse to limit myself to a single option, to an exterior resemblance, to a unity of style which canit exist. A color chart differs only externally from a small green landscape. Both reflect the same basic attitude. It is this attitude which is significant.i

Product Details

• Hardcover: 44 pages
• Publisher: Zwirner & Wirth (June 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970888430
• ISBN-13: 978-0970888433
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 11.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,362,245 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely book - false advertising!, January 8, 2005

By 

Allan Cody-Rapport (Clermont, Fl United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gerhard Richter: Landscapes (Hardcover)

I really like this book. BUT... this is NOT the book that you see when you click on the "See Inside The Book" option above. This book is 44 pages long, and is the catalogue from a gallery show in NY. The book they show in "Look Inside..." is a translation of a german book of 129 pages published by Hatje Cantz. This book has only 9 Richter plates (and a couple of Caspar David Friedrich plates) while the german one has at least twenty, and there maybe a second page of plates listed that isn't accessible through Amazon. Now I really like small gallery publications; the essays are different (but maybe no less obfuscating in their tangential onanism) and the focus is narrower, and I don't want to give the impression that I am disappointed in this book - it's just not the book that I thought I was ordering. Therefore, 4 not 5 stars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Enigmatic Gerhard Richter, September 15, 2011

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gerhard Richter: Landscapes (Hardcover)

Gerhard Richter (born 1932) can best be described as 'visual artist'. It would be misleading to label him a painter as his output has not only included photography but also utilizes photography in an unusual manner. He defies classification except to be labeled as and Artist of the highest magnitude. His works include both abstraction and realism and the viewer is at times challenged to recognize the mode of expression or even the hand of the artist of creation!

For those who see Richter as the master of the panoramic views of mysterious subjects viewing the works in this fine volume may at first seem strange. But Gerhard Richter has long been a proponent of landscape painting in the influence of the great landscape artists such as the German Caspar David Friedrich, the Swiss Arnold Böcklin, and the British J.M.W. Turner and John Constable: his own comments include "my landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful'... by untruthful I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature--Nature, which in all its forms is against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy..."

At times Richter paints his landscapes purely from gessoed canvas to brush while at other times his technique is to overpaint photographs with either light washes or with added created commentary that gives the finished image an entirely different meaning. He has painted both black and white townscapes inspired by newspaper articles or photographs as well as lush impastos of heavy paint creating vast seascapes or vistas of mountains or ledges with impossibly visualized distances. He at times seems to be contradictory in his view of nature: the images can vary form Romantic, hazy, foggy atmospheres to raw abstraction strokes that seem at odds with the tranquility of the landscape. His artistic drive seems to respond to the need to show the viewer the rawness of nature uncontrolled by man.

The accompanying essays in the book are brief and pointed and add that necessary aspect of coming closer tot he strange work of Gerhard Richter. This is a powerful collection of images, well worth adding to the library of contemporary art. Grady Harp, September 11

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book (not falsely advertised), August 16, 2011

By 

flavorpacket - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gerhard Richter: Landscapes (Hardcover)

After seeing the first review that the book was falsely advertised (i.e. a short catalog instead of a book), I was worried but went ahead with my order anyway. I'm glad I did. The book I received was exactly as pictured (something like 190 pages) and is amazing. It includes essays and images. The images are a little on the small size but are very well done.