Gerhard Richter Portraits
Gerhard Richter Portraits
Painting Appearances
Paul Moorhouse
This groundbreaking survey of Richter's portraits covers the period from the 1960s to the present day. It explores a vital aspects of his art in unprecedented detail, and highlights include the important early black- and- white paintings made from magazine photographs, portraits based on private snapshots and a new portrait never previously shown.
During the course of a career that now spans more than fifty years, Gerhard Richter (b.1932) has established a reputation as one of the world's leading contemporary artists. For some, quite simply he is the greatest living painter - a complex figure whose work encompasses figurative paintings based on photographs as well as brightly coloured abstracts with no apparent subject.
Gerhard Richter Portraits: Painting Appearances maps out Richter's portraiture in sections that consider the artist's private images - focusing on his use of personal photographs - and personal history, in which Richter's preoccupation with his family and his own image take centre stage. Author and curator Paul Moorhouse examines those portraits that are drawn from a range of media-derived sources, and goes on to investigate the artist's curiosity in art history, looking in particular at portrayals of Richter's associations within the art world.
With over 100 full-colour illustrations from international, public and private collections, this book offers a major advance in the understanding and appreciation of the artist's work. By examining a comprehensive range of portraits and scrutinising the sophisticated ways in which Richter has challenged and extended the genre of portraiture, the startling range of the artist's source material is revealed.
Published to accompany the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London (26 February - 31 May 2009).
Specification
340 x 250mm, 176 pages
Over 100 illustrations
ISBN 978 1 85514 397 5
Gallery edition £22.50 hardback (Trade RRP £40)
Pub date Feb 2009
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