201 Quotes by Gerhard Richter

It’s that same quality I’ve been talking about. It’s neither contrived, nor surprising and smart, not baffling, not witty, not interesting, not cynical, it can’t be planned and it probably can’t even be described. It’s just good.

I’m trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That’s all.

What counts isn’t being able to do a thing, it’s seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.

I’m never really sure what that word means, but however inaccurately I use it, ‘classical’ was always my ideal, as long as I can remember, and something of that has always stayed with me, to this day. Of course, there were difficulties, because in comparison to my ideal, I didn’t even come close.

I don’t create blurs. Blurring is not the most important thing; nor is it an identity tag for my pictures.

If I don’t know what’s coming – that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original – then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

The smudging makes the paintings a bit more complete. When they’re not blurred, so many details seem wrong, and the whole thing is wrong too. Then smudging can help make the painting invincible, surreal, more enigmatic – that’s how easy it is.

The paint for the grey paintings was mixed beforehand and then applied with different implements – sometimes a roller, sometimes a brush. It was only after painting them that I sometimes felt that the grey was not yet satisfactory and that another layer of paint was needed.

Well, I don’t believe there are subjects that can’t be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can’t paint.