The Richter-Scale of Blur

Landscapes of Ice, Wind, and Snow: Alexander Kluge's Aesthetic of Coldness

“…The relative differences evinced by Richter's play with focal length and depth of field-not even his most extreme long shots can encapsulate the whole of any landscape without fading into a blur of snow and fog-are not unlike the elusive visual points of reference on the horizon Dr. Wernecke seeks and ultimately finds by sheer happenstance. 38 In this absence of any clear "WAY OUT," Kluge's stories point toward an overall atmospherics of end time, much as the play with (in)differentiation in Richter's photographs, practically devoid of human life, convey a timeless sense of atmospheric space. The cold month of December-the twilight month of the Gregorian calendar year, Kluge writes-is characterized by a "shortage of time," an "acceleration of passing time," and a "dislocation of time" (D, 1, 22, 68).…”

Contradictory Modernities: Conceptions of Nature in the Art of Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter

“…The extensive use of photomontage and photorealism addresses the ambiguous place of mass-produced imagery in the formulation of our aesthetic and intellectual sensibilities. The complex oscillation between painting and photography in Richter's work plays at the very core of his artistic dilemma between a "redundant figuration and the inflated subjectivism, idealism and existential weightlessness of various forms of abstraction" (Osborne 1992:104; see also Koch 1992). Photographic images are used to denote aspects of contemporary reality, as a means to work within a dialectic between mass culture and the elitist and esoteric conditions of high culture (Koch et al 1995;Zweite 1990;Richter 1995: 152).…”