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atlas - gerhard richter at the whitechapel gallery 05.01.04
Reviews

From: jwang
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 12 January 2004

Review

Many critics hail Richter as the greatest living painter, and I would almost have to agree. However, this show barely deals with his painting (there are 4 or 5 represented in Atlas). Instead, it delves behind, or rather, around his known body of work to explore the relationship between photography and painting.

In his book “The Daily Practice of Painting,” Richter is careful to not define the role of photography as subordinate to his way of working. Rather, he sees photos, such as the scores collected in this exhibition, as integral to modern image-making, whether they be snapshots, candid, posed, portraits, family records, et cetera.

This was not made to be a show for the general public – it is for painters, it is for image-makers, and it is for reverent fans who will find this cataloguing and referencing intriguing. I am not critical about this; rather, I find the Whitechapel’s approach almost innovative and positively assumptive of the audience’s ability to intelligently identify Richter’s work as derivations, not mere party-trick-copying.

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