This set of five studies after the art of Gerhard Richter is a recomposed version of music composed in 2013/14 after an encounter with Richter and his work at the Tate Modern show in 2012.
Richter’s art is famously controversial for seeming to be so diverse in style and approach: photo-real depictions of people, objects and landscapes, severely minimal impersonal constructions, dynamic abstractions, and works that merge aspects of these areas.
I. Sea-Sea (Patterns – Mirrored, Divided, Repeated)
After Seascape (Sea-Sea), 1970, © Gerhard Richter 2023
It takes a few seconds for the first-time viewer to register that this is a collage of two seas and the presentation of an exquisitely poised paradox: two sublime reaches, but reduced to two juxtaposed units, neither able to be divested of their beauty, but captured in a configuration never designed to hide its mechanical origins.
II. Dead I
After Dead, 1988, © Gerhard Richter 2023
The series of fifteen paintings, 18. Oktober 1977, painted in 1988, are derived from photographic and video archives documenting the deaths of the Baader-Meinhof activists in Stammheim Prison in 1977. The three Dead paintings depict the body of Ulrike Meinhof.
Music derived from solo string pieces by Bach is blurred both harmonically and rhythmically: the waltz-like accompaniment is made from a harmonic sequence unrelated to the upper voices (which becomes an important feature in the 5th study), and it is cast in rhythmic durations also in conflict with the upper voices.
III. Cologne Window
Cologne Cathedral Window, 2007, © Gerhard Richter 2014 4096 Colours, 1974, © Gerhard Richter 2023
Richter’s painting, 4096 Colours, emerged in 1974 through a series of intricate chance operations. The artist reprised this approach for his magnificent stained-glass window for Cologne Cathedral in 2007. The juxtaposition of such strategies, now expressed in light, with the awe-inspiring Gothic architecture of the Cathedral was incredibly resonant for me.
For the music I took Bach’s Prelude in C minor BWV 847 and applied a series of partially randomised reordering operations that felt resonant with Richter’s use of chance operations affecting the placement of small units of colour over a grid.
IV. Dead II
After Dead, 1988, © Gerhard Richter 2023
This is the second of the two responses to Richter’s Dead painting. Essentially, the material of the first response is passed through more extreme ‘blurring’ filters, with added harmonic resonance, continuous tremolo and much use of the sustain pedal.
V. 32 Portraits
After 48 Portraits, 1971-98, Gerhard Richter (1932), Tate / National Galleries of Scotland, © Gerhard Richter 2023.
Richter’s 48 Portraits is an ambiguous, monochrome presentation of ‘great men’ straddling the eras of late romanticism and modernism, all corralled together, seemingly at random, but strictly lined up and with control exerted over directions of gaze. I chose to focus upon this notion of supposedly ‘canonical’ objects being forced together, the use of a resonant number, limited chance, and the harvesting and arrangement of elements. This led me to three large volumes sitting on the shelves across from me in my study, the 32 Piano Sonatas by Beethoven. I selected small segments from the endings of all the sonatas and created a simple chronological sequence. These are presented alongside a chordal canon taken from the accompaniment of Dead I, sometimes vertically, sometimes in horizontal order. Each presentation of the horizontal sequence is progressively compressed until nothing is left.