Gerhard Richter

One of the world’s greatest living painters, the German artist Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. The first glimpse inside his studio in decades, Gerhard Richter Painting is exactly that: a thrilling document of the 79-year-old’s creative process, juxtaposed with rare archival footage and intimate conversations with his critics and collaborators. In this documentary, we are brought to understand the process of making his painting and how one painting is could give different perspective to people.

The documentary is focusing in the process of making the abstract painting which will be displayed in the gallery. It is a hard time for Gerhard for this documentary making for some reason. A painter are mostly paint in closed area with less people and only focusing through what he will make and what the documenter demands. One of the film most intriguing moments has Richter quietly confronting Belz and he mentioned that giving her this kind of carte-blanche  was a good idea or not. Aside from being documented, he also felt that he was being watched and exposed too much, “The worst this there is, worse than being in hospital. The camera makes everything different, you feel so exposed.” The camera is giving another level of stress to painter now. Even though he said that, he tried to not bother by the camera and this makes him as a real professional. For some reason, some people will refuse being filmed or said, I am not good with camera, and you can get what you want, but no me in the screen. Through this, I somehow can see how much effort that Belz give to encourage Gerhard for this documentary. It is not easy to encourage people to do what you want, especially when they already feel the uncomfortable.

Aside from what he felt during the shooting, there is other thing that I want to state. The process of making painting is deep and here, the documentary exposed them in such a simple way. There is no exaggerating thing in this documentary. She is giving what the painter is and the struggle of making the painting. The documentary also provides lots of beautiful works as the footages and it somehow make the atmosphere different each time it switched into different painting. The camera movement is stable too, and there is no handled camera, I think.

At the end, this documentary gives me a new perspective of seeing artist. I am not really sure what abstract artist do was before. I thought it is an easy thing to make abstract, you just spread over the brush everywhere without some rules or things to be modeled. Yeah, pretty sure it was, but after watching this, it gives me that being abstract is hard too. Even though it looks abstract, but the process of making them is not. This documentary has reached a goals to make people understand more about art, even they are just a beginner at this point.