September A History Painting by Gerhard Richter

By Robert Storr

In the book, Storr explores the meaning and controversy behind the painting September 11 by Gerhard Richter. The painting is based around the terror attack on the world trade center on 9/11/01. As a man who witnessed this attack from a distance and new friends and neighbors who had been in the buildings and nearby the buildings on the day of this horrific event he starts by telling his own story, his own feelings, and thoughts from this day. Storr suggests the meaning of Richter’s painting “to render the simple, absolute but always elusive reality of human suffering”.

The American critic and curator Robert Storr has a working relationship with Richter. Storr shows how Richter struggled to express this event in his work, starting with a blank canvas working from photographic images and videos, painting the event quite literally he soon became unhappy with the way that his painting was portraying the event. Contemplating destroying the painting all together he decided to deface it by using his usual abstract technique of dragging the paint across the canvas in different ways, leaving only two visible layers of the painting. After reading this I thought that maybe the layers on the painting could suggest the different effects that this event had on the world, the chaos of the event and then the smoky calm silence following. Or as Storr puts it “a ghost of a ghost”.

This book investigates the true meaning behind the painting and what drove Ritcher to pick such a heated topic. This meaning which does not become clear until after learning the title. I am fascinated with how you can create a piece of work which comes across so calm and muted, to then give it a title and change it to such a highly emotional and impactful piece.

Bibliography:

Storr, R. (2010) September A History Painting by Gerhard Richter. Millbank London. Tate Publishing.

The Human Figure

“The human figure” I was given this title for a project, after exploring many aspects of this there was one which seemed to stick, looking into human features and how each and every one of us have inherited our features and characteristics from another person.

After seeing the work of a photographer called Larry Sultan I was immediately inspired to take pictures of my family and the way they are on a day to day basis. I then chose to concentrate on the facial features of my family members. the ones which you could clearly see had been passed down the family line. I later noticed when taking these pictures in such a relaxed way, whilst talking to the models I was capturing their facial expressions at the same time. I started drawing from these photographs trying to express the emotions which you could see on their faces, within the expressive lines and textures of the portrait study. Using the colours and shapes of expressive lines to portray the expressions, I then thought how the models face could appear emotionless yet the model could be feeling something very strongly. Considering this idea, I decided to change the way I was creating these portrait pieces. To draw my portraits with the absence of emotion on their faces but the surroundings of the portrait would be expressing everything.