Gerhard Richter - Volker Bradke / EIS - 2010

Two artist's books from the personal archives of Gerhard Richter, both first editions, both in new condition!

Gerhard Richter – Volker Bradke, 1966 16 mm, b/w, 14:32 min –
Publisher: Gerhard Richter Archive Dresden Volume 6 – Dumont –
ISBN 9783832192815 year 2010
Hardcover of 104 pages with dust jacket, plus DVD, all in new condition!

We already knew that Gerhard Richter is a versatile artist, but it turns out that in 1966 he also made a film that was presented at Galerie Schmela, yet surprisingly, it was almost forgotten afterward. It is a film of less than a quarter of an hour that contains no drama, no story, but in which Volker Bradke, an essentially insignificant frequent exhibition visitor, gained his one moment of fame.

What Richter does in this film and actually pushes to the limit is what he also did in many of his 'realistic' paintings – exploring how far you can go in blurring your subject, in not focusing. When is a person still recognizable if you deliberately set the lens to be blurry or if you use such a coarse grain that you can hardly see what’s in your frame?

It turns out that with moving images, you can go much further than when you're painting; that's the surprising aspect of this film. Because, in fact, you can hardly call this a film. It's more of an investigation into the boundaries of recognizability – when do moving images with moving people become abstract? Almost never, it seems, because our minds still fill in the gaps, and we still see that person move. Thus, Volker Bradke remains a fascinating experiment to watch after all these years. The film has been released on DVD in a beautiful booklet with accompanying texts and photographs.

2 Gerhard Richter – EIS
Publisher – Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König Cologne 2011
– ISBN 9783865609243
Double-sided art skills book - hardcover, 96 pages with dust jacket.
In like new condition

I have not often come across a more remarkable artist's book than EIS by Gerhard Richter. The photos of icebergs and floating ice were taken by Richter during a trip to Greenland in 1972. They are not exactly artistically justified photos or even beautiful photos. It is Gerhard Richter's personal impression of ice.

The photos are all printed in the same size, 8.5 x 12.9 cm, and the book contains text blocks in the same format. The texts are taken from the 1871 Brockhaus encyclopedia about Greenland, and you start reading at a seemingly random point; the text appears to have no beginning or end.

The book has another peculiarity: it is two books in one, meaning that if you flip the book over, you will see a cover there as well, and you can start reading from that side too. In practice, this means that when you read and especially look at the book, you will encounter a number of texts and photos that are upside down.

Once you've finished the book 'out,' turn it over and start again, and you'll find that the photos still look different, which creates a remarkable and sometimes quite unsettling effect. And so, the artist Richter suddenly makes you see things in a different way.

I must admit that I have looked at this book several times with increasing astonishment (and read fragments), because Richter manages to make you fascinated by a whole series of photos that are, in themselves, absolutely unremarkable. Stunning and very special.