Gerhard Richter Quotes

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

When I make a representation of something, this, too, is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it.

Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.

I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.

Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

Comprehension follows perception.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.

Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences. ... In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding.

Poetry contains almost all you need to know about life.

Only through Beauty's morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything.