richter

 Went to see the film 'Gerhard Richter paintings'. It is part of the German film festival happening in my city at the moment. 

The film itself was compelling one, it's a slower introspective one that grows on you afterwards. The film follows current paintings being produced by the artist. The other part  intersects this by showing Richter’s work at different stages throughout his career. 

The works of paintings he was working on during film was the one in the picture above. A lot freer and abstract than his earlier work.

Since Richter’s body of work spans decades, his expansive works were shown in the film through filming scaled mini copies of his artworks laid one against the other, thus forming a (very) long succession of mini paintings -like a gallery. It interesting way to show/represent something. This method parallels to the present part of the film as Richter and his team also use similar scaled models for planning for upcoming exhibitions. 

 The film also showed older footages of the artist and also covered little about his background influencing his works. 

I found the scenes which he was applying paint to the canvas with his squeegee and laboriously dragging it across the canvas a little slow - like watching paint dry. But other parts were revealing and gave much scope. For example, watching Richters interactions with his unfailing assistants, who seem to do all the dirty work for him - uncovered personal aspects on the artist and the roles played amongst those surrounding him. I guess I’m trying to say such scenes shows us what it means to be an artist.  

Like the miniature painting copies, the film really examines the process of making art in a microscopic level. It's saturated of footages of paint poured in, squirted, smeared, scraped, stirred etc. I just loved the amplified gluggy sounds of paint poured into the pail. Really effective in a cinema. 

If you saw this film what where your thoughts?