A Quote by Gerhard Richter

And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s (paintings from black-and-white photographs), with a compressed summation that precludes any possible continuation. And so it is a leave-taking from thoughts and feelings of my own on a very basic level. Not that this is a deliberate act, of course; it is a quasi-automatic sequence of disintegration and reformation which I can perceive, as always, only in retrospect.
I wanted to say something different: the pictures are also a leave-taking, in several respects. Factually: these specific persons are dead; as a general statement, death is leave-taking. And then ideologically: a leave-taking from a specific doctrine of salvation and, beyond that, from the illusion that unacceptable circumstances of life can be changed by this conventional expedient of violent struggle.
When I began taking photographs I thought they might work better in magazines, in a journalistic sense, rather than as art.
We know taking care of an infant isn't just women's work - so why should maternity leave be the norm when paternity leave is the exception? There's no question that taking care of and bonding with a new baby is just as important and meaningful for dads as it is for moms.
Distance of Time and Place do really cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking Leave of our Friends resembles taking Leave of the World, concerning which it hath been often said, that it is not Death but Dying which is terrible.
The basic thing is that I want to do the best work possible, and I can only do that if I'm relaxed and have a lot of energy. And that can only come from taking time off.
That is what I seek, to essay interesting and challenging characters, which develop me as an actor and at a personal level to work with people who inspire me to push my boundaries and work on interesting scripts which which turn into refined work of art and leave a mark on me and the audience.
One of the interesting things I discovered is that in the late 19th century, painters actually had black-and-white copies made of their own paintings. They chose it even over photographs because they knew the photographic medium would distort their work.
As a kid growing up and seeing so much strife taking place in society, and particularly on Blacks and people of color, I had an opportunity as a young man to witness the change that was taking place in Harlem, the exodus of white folks leaving Harlem, which I thought was a very cohesive situation. But they felt that they needed to leave.
[When] I am taking a photograph, I am conscious that I am constructing images rather than taking snapshots. Since I do not take rapid photographs it is in this respect like a painting which takes a long time where you are very aware of what you are doing in the process. Exposure is only the final act of making the image as a photograph.
My kids get very upset with me when I leave to do film work, but they have a lot of patience with me when I leave to do environmental work.
I always believed that my work should be unfinished in the sense that I encourage people to add their creativity to it, either conceptually or physically. Back in the 1960s, I was calling for 'Unfinished Music,' number one, and number two, with my artwork - I was taking unfinished work into the gallery. And that's how I was looking at it.
I never had any intention nor interest in being an artist, but when I made work I realized that this was my language. What I had to say needed to be said in this way. I always loved taking photographs - but never considered myself a photographer. I have tremendous respect for photographers. I do use a camera and a photo as a basis for a lot of my work, but I use it as a means to attain an image to work from. The actual photography in my work is a monochromatic photograph. I'll photograph something and extract a color that will then be the background for a painting.
Until the late 1970s there'd either be only black or white in the paintings or if there were colours it would be a small amount, not a large area, and with the color separated from other colors by black or white (which is formula for Damien Hirst's successful dot paintings, incidentally).
A graduate student who is still learning courses is not really taking a maximum advantage of a research university's offerings. He should already be finished with course-taking, as he would then be able to shape his own taste about what is a good subject for research work in the graduate school.
I try to leave my work at the door when I leave the set. It's almost like summer camp. You go in hard, then you leave, and it's done.
Taking photographs is not something that happens only in a moment I press the button. It is a full-time occupation. For me there is difference between leisure and work.
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