Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers Text by Gerhard Richter.
Patterns represents a brilliant new adventure in image-making and book-making by Gerhard Richter, who in recent years has produced several fascinating explorations of the possibilities of the artist’s book. For this latest project, Richter took an image of his work “Abstract Painting” (CR: 7244) and divided it vertically into strips: first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, up to 4,096 strips. This process, involving twelve stages of division, results in 8,190 strips, each of which is reproduced here at the height of the original image. With each stage of division, the strips become progressively thinner (a strip of the 12th division is just 0.08 millimeters; further divisions would only become visible by enlargement). Each strip is then mirrored and repeated, producing an incredibly detailed patterning. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. The resulting 221 patterns are reproduced here on landscape spreads, making for a truly extraordinary reading-viewing book experience. Born in Dresden, East Germany, in 1932, Gerhard Richter migrated to West Germany in 1961, settling in Düsseldorf, where he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, and where he held his first solo exhibition in 1963. Over the course of that decade, Richter helped to liberate painting from the legacy of Socialist Realism (in Eastern Germany) and Abstract Expressionism (in Western Germany and throughout Europe). He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, with a major European touring retrospective in London, Berlin and Paris in 2012. He lives and works in Cologne.
Featured image is reproduced from Gerhard Richter: Patterns.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New Yorker
Peter Schjeldahl
Lacking "the time and quietness" that he needs for painting, he said, he indulged in a mentally relaxing game of chance, which he has documented in a dazzling, text-free book, "Patterns" (Distributed Art Publishers).
Time
Belinda Luscombe
"… My friend bought a painting, and he bought me a good reproduction--a wonderful poster. And it attracted me. I started to play with a mirror. I doubled and shrank and divided and mirrored and divided. It was like a gift which I didn't design. I like it a lot when I get something by chance… It's very decorative. I am fascinated by [composer] John Cage, and he says it well: "I have nothing to say, so I say it"…People won't stop painting, just as they won't stop making music or dancing. This is a facility we have. Children don't stop doing it or having it. On the other hand, it seems we don't need painting anymore. Culture is more interested in entertaining people. Every museum is full of nice things. That's the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things."
Patterns are ever-present elements in our daily lives, and as such, they can easily be taken for granted. Ornate wallpapers that beg you to question the taste of whomever put them up and age-old adages about horizontal stripes making you look chubbier permeate our everyday perceptions. Fashion designers bring their work to life with all manner of patterns, ranging from minimalistic and abstract motifs to delicately hand-painted flowers. But despite their ubiquity, patterns by themselves seem always to remain at the edge of our consciousness, begging the question of what their place really is, and what importance they might carry—in art, as well as popular culture. continue to blog
Our top holiday gift book of the year, Gerhard Richter: Patterns comes highly recommended by The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl, Time Magazine's Belinda Luscombe and Bookforum editor Albert Mobilio, who writes, "The effect of diving into this book—and that is precisely how it feels, like plummeting headlong through an image—recalls the 1977 Charles and Ray Eames documentary Powers of Ten. In that film, the camera zoomed exponentially far out in space to view a picnic scene from one hundred million light years away and then zoomed back in, through the solar system, the earth’s atmosphere, and then into a man’s hand, and his DNA, stopping on an image of a single, shimmering proton. Patterns affords travel in both directions, too; if treated like a flip book, you can page from the front or the back, macro to micro, or vice versa... Pausing to study any one spread (an image mirrored across the book’s gutter) can be... vertiginous and rewarding: The intricate beauty feels at once machined and biomorphic. Allow yourself to fall into any one image: Relax your eyes for a minute. No 3-D picture of the Starship Enterprise will emerge. But you will see something at least as surprising: what division and multiplication actually look like, the very shape and motion of arithmetic. In this depiction of the invisible, Richter assuredly links abstract painting to the abstraction of numbers." Featured image is a detail from Gerhard Richter: Patterns. continue to blog
In this week's Time Magazine, reporter Belinda Luscombe interviews German artist Gerhard Richter on the occasion of his current exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery and the concurrent release of his related artist's book, Patterns. When asked, "Your new series of paintings and the book about them, Patterns, depict rows of thin stripes. How did you create them?" Richter replies, "I played. My friend bought a painting, and he bought me a good reproduction--a wonderful poster. And it attracted me. I started to play with a mirror. I doubled and shrank and divided and mirrored and divided. It was like a gift which I didn't design. I like it a lot when I get something by chance." When Luscombe asks, "How would you respond to people who say they look like wrapping paper?" Richter replies, "They are right. It's very decorative. I am fascinated by [composer] John Cage, and he says it well: 'I have nothing to say, so I say it.' Customs agents asked me at the airport, 'What do you do?' and I said, 'I have a show here.' And I showed them the invitation, and they said, 'Meh, Christmas box.' We had fun." Featured image is a detail from Gerhard Richter: Patterns. continue to blog
Wednesday evening, September 12, Marian Goodman gallery opens Gerhard Richter: PAINTING 2012, an exhibition which includes the artist's large-scale digital Strip Paintings, which derive from the single abstract painting "724-4" (1990), featured here. With the help of digital software, Richter divided "724-4" into a series of progressively thinner bands involving 12 stages of division and resulting in 8,190 strips. D.A.P. Publishing's newly released artist's book, Gerhard Richter: Patterns documents the artist's digital breakdown of the original painting. According to Goodman, "From this volume, one can follow the results of Richter's process in action, which focuses on the many sections of the painting. As his plan develops a life of its own, it generates a process of mirroring, repetition and multiplication of ever more reduced sections, until finally a display of more than 4000 patterns are formed, as if the digital process had now assumed the role of sorcerer." Featured image is reproduced from Gerhard Richter: Patterns. continue to blog
NEW YORK Showroom by Appointment Only 75 Broad Street, Suite 630 New York NY 10004 Tel 212 627 1999
LOS ANGELES Showroom by Appointment Only
818 S. Broadway, Suite 700 Los Angeles, CA 90014 Tel. 323 969 8985
ARTBOOK LLC D.A.P. | Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
All site content Copyright C 2000-2023 by Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. and the respective publishers, authors, artists. For reproduction permissions, contact the copyright holders.
The D.A.P. Catalog www.artbook.com
Distributed by D.A.P.
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.25 x 5.5 in. / 488 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9781935202981 PUBLISHER: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers AVAILABLE: 8/31/2012 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Gerhard Richter: Patterns Divided, Mirrored, Repeated
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. Text by Gerhard Richter.
Patterns represents a brilliant new adventure in image-making and book-making by Gerhard Richter, who in recent years has produced several fascinating explorations of the possibilities of the artist’s book. For this latest project, Richter took an image of his work “Abstract Painting” (CR: 7244) and divided it vertically into strips: first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, up to 4,096 strips. This process, involving twelve stages of division, results in 8,190 strips, each of which is reproduced here at the height of the original image. With each stage of division, the strips become progressively thinner (a strip of the 12th division is just 0.08 millimeters; further divisions would only become visible by enlargement). Each strip is then mirrored and repeated, producing an incredibly detailed patterning. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. The resulting 221 patterns are reproduced here on landscape spreads, making for a truly extraordinary reading-viewing book experience. Born in Dresden, East Germany, in 1932, Gerhard Richter migrated to West Germany in 1961, settling in Düsseldorf, where he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, and where he held his first solo exhibition in 1963. Over the course of that decade, Richter helped to liberate painting from the legacy of Socialist Realism (in Eastern Germany) and Abstract Expressionism (in Western Germany and throughout Europe). He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, with a major European touring retrospective in London, Berlin and Paris in 2012. He lives and works in Cologne.
