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Gerhard Richter
Seestück (Seascape), 1998

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Seestück (Seascape)
Artist name
Gerhard Richter
Date created
1998
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on linen
Dimensions
114 1/4 in. × 114 1/4 in. (290.2 cm × 290.2 cm)
Date acquired
1998
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© Gerhard Richter
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.527
Artwork status
On view on floor 6 as part of German Art After 1960

Audio Stories

Nature’s beauty and indifference

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transcripts

SFX: Lapping of waves on the shore. Low tide. A moment of just this before Storr comes in. 

 

ROBERT STORR: 
Nature doesn’t care very much about us.  

 

NARRATOR:  

Artist and curator Robert Storr.  

 

STORR:  

In fact, nature is quite cruel in our regard; or at least, if not cruel, at least destructive. Cruelty assumes an intention which nature doesn’t have. But in any case, nature is indifferent to us. But we can look at nature without being indifferent to it. Not that we can find our own emotional symbols in nature and believe in them the way the Romantics did, but we can see nature for what it is. 

 

SFX: More sea, a seagull goes by 

 

STORR:  

What Richter thinks of being beautiful is that which is uninjured. And so those landscapes or seascapes where there’s almost nothing but light and primary form are the most beautiful of his work. 

 

SFX: Waves fade out.

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