Painting Styles Experiments and Gerhard Richter Research

After initial inspiration from Anselm Reyle's work, I had a go at completing some painting experiments.

• Silver paint - drip effect. This would look good if it was overlapped multiple times to create a thicker textured layer. 

Paint Rolling:

• Continuing the paint rolling process I developed yesterday. This time using red and blue. 

A video of the process of this paint rolling technique below: 

Reflections and further research:

• This paint rolling technique I have developed creates details within the paint itself. This has become an abstract look that I really like. 
• The next step would be to overlap this style of painting.
• There isn't really much difference from bending metal for visual affect, to rolling paint to create detail within the material. 
• This style reminds me of Gerhard Richter's work, and this should be a further research point. 

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist who is best known for his abstract paintings. https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art

Abstraktes Bild 599, 1986

• Abstraktes Bild 599 sold for $44.52 million (£30.4 million) in London at Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale. 

Abstract Painting (726), 1990

Abstraktes Bild Abstract Painting, 1999, 50 cm x 72 cm

• "Richter has explained that he alters his abstract paintings ‘much more often than the representational ones. They often turn out completely different to what I’d planned’ (Nicolas Serota and Gerhard Richter, ‘I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It’, in Godfrey and Serota 2011, p.17)."

Gerhard Richter in Conversation with Nicholas Serota Video

Below is a really interesting section from the transcript from the video above:

• Serota:"We have in the exhibition several sculptures or objects. It’s unusual for a painter to make objects like this, why did you make them? 
• Richter: Why not? 
• Serota: But it’s unusual for a painter to make sculpture. 
• Richter: Yes, Degas made nice dancers. 
• Serota: Well, I happen to think that that’s true…
• Richter: Picasso…
• Serota: …that some of them, no, no, I happen to think that some of the best sculpture was made by painters, but why did you want to make objects?
• Richter: It came to me and I said, yes, I’m allowed to do this. Yes, I wanted to, not so many, some glasses.
• Serota: Some glasses. 
• Richter: Yes, these are not sculptures.
• Serota: What are they? Richter: I don’t know, objects. 
• Serota: They’re objects which are also paintings.
• Richter: No, paintings, no.
• Serota: Okay.
• Richter: Painting is flat. Painting show what isn't there."

This is an argument between painting and sculpture. I was a painter before I created any sculpture, I still look at all my sculptural works as paintings and treat them as paintings. The way that Richter says painting shows what isn't there reminds me of Anish Kapoor's work with the 'void'.

YouTube, The Value of Art | Episode 10: Quality [online video]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WDZ4Hmiy9w 

• In the Sotheby's Value of art video above, Gerhard Richter is quoted, he talks about the chance involved with his abstract painting, stating he knows when one is complete when it 'exceeds' him. This adds a quality to his work, which could support his high market prices, but ultimately it is the connection with the process. 

Reflections

• Gerhard Richter's work has always inspired me for its detail and simplicity, but more recently I have become attracted to the process in which he works, by dragging a squeegee across the canvas repeatedly until he is 'satisfied', which he says, is when he knows its complete.  

Further Development

• Canvas research, Paints research,