Gerhard Richter Quotes

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

If I paint something, I don't want to have to explain what it is.

Not all paintings are abstract; they're not all Jackson Pollock. There's value in a photograph of a man alone on a boat at sea, and there is value in painting of a man alone on a boat at sea. In the painting, the painting has more freedom to express an idea, more latitude in being able to elicit certain emotion.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.

Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.

Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.

I think when somebody's painting they don't necessarily... I'm not illustrating what I know. I'm mapping out, like topographically, some terrain I am satisfied with, how awkward that mark is.

When you sketch a shoe but don't have the intention to do a proper shoe, it remains a curvy sketch with no detail. The shoe completely morphs to the body.

There are websites of 'True Detective' artwork out there now, and it's beautiful. And I don't want to take that away from anybody. I know what it means to me. But I don't want to take away anyone's interpretation of the show.

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

Music is an expression of individuality; it's how you see the world. All art is, for that matter. You take how you experience the world, interpret it, and send it out there - express it - whether it's sculpture, dance or singing.

I try not to spend too much time interpreting my comics for people, because I try to put out there whatever I can, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want.

I feel it's my job as the artist who is making the music to pair it with visuals that I see in my head while writing the music in the first place.

Once my paintings are complete, the model no longer lives in the painting as themselves. I see something bigger, more symbolic - an archetype.

I have been continuously aware that in painting, I am always dealing with... a relational structure. Which in turn makes permission 'to be abstract' no problem at all.

I don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person in a certain way.

In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.