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Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Picture), 1988

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Picture)
Artist name
Gerhard Richter
Date created
1988
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on linen
Dimensions
24 3/8 in. × 24 1/2 in. (61.91 cm × 62.23 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© Gerhard Richter
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.314.2
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

How did Richter make this painting?

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transcripts

SFX: Scraping. Footsteps. Slide of a brush. The sounds of Richter making a painting are the main experience of the sound design – the voices come in and out, but the physical sounds of the process are the constant.  

 

NARRATOR:  

Those are the sounds of artist Gerhard Richter making one of his large abstract paintings. 

 

RACHEL JANS:  

It’s a highly physical process that takes place over an extended period of time.  

 

NARRATOR:  

And that’s curator Rachel Jans.  

 

SFX: Sharp scrape, footsteps 

 

JANS:  

Richter’s abstract pictures are built of a single layer by a single layer sometimes scraping them and removing paint, sometimes allowing layers of paint to merge.  

 

SFX: Long sound of squeegee 

 

JANS: 

One of the tools is a squeegee- a large squeegee- that he can pull across the painting, or down the painting so it actually moves layers of paint.  

 

SFX: Long sound of squeegee 

 

JANS:  

It can blend the layers- 

 

SFX: The wet drips of paint, the slide of a brush. Sounds of scraping and smearing continue through Storr’s comments. 

 

JANS:  

Remove layers, add layers. 

 

SFX: Big scrape, footsteps, as if the artist continues to work. Then fades with the music.  

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