Growing up is hard for anyone. Particularly, those growing up during wartime; furthermore, those who grew up in Germany, under the reign of Hitler truly suffered. Gerhard Richter was one of these unfortunate souls, However, he takes his experiences in Germany and the rest of his life to create beautiful paintings, as well as to push himself to be better. Growing up, art wasn’t necessarily deemed as a profitable job, especially art in the form of abstraction. Therefore, Richter started off his time as an artist by painting family portraits, and other still life photos. Slowly, he turned his painting towards abstraction. This started by him recreating pictures and blurring the lines. Whether it be a townscape, or a naked woman, he would blur the painting, causing the audience to question why? Richter explained that this was how he saw these photos that he based his paintings off of. The towns were slightly blurred because the morals of the city are blurred, and there is turmoil, just like the blur in the paintings. Eventually, Richter turns to completely abstract paintings that are a combination of color and lines. This is when he creates my piece, “Station”. After growing up in World War II Germany, Gerhard Richter translates his young adulthood into his work on canvas. Through blurred images, and colorful streaks, he created "Station" as an abstract piece of art that makes the observer ask the purpose behind the painting.

"Station" Richter

“Station” is one in a series of abstract paintings that is a combination of colors and brushstrokes. Richter created these paintings through “complex layers of different colors in different brushstrokes built up with different tools” (Foster, 2003). The strokes are almost self-cancelling and random. However, Richter had a purpose for every stroke. The series that “Station” appears in is very similar, almost interchangeable, as if the “Form is nonsense”, yet Richter calls this “planned arbitrariness” (Foster, 2003). He wants the audience to question the purpose of having multiple paintings that are so similar with their bursts of colors striped across a page. I think he wanted to people to realize that there is beauty in every single painting, regardless of how similar they are, even if one stroke is different, a painting can tell a different story.

“Station” is filled with an array of bright colors; this is what initially attracted my eye at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The sporadic lines and colors are overwhelming, yet perfectly pieced together. Richter wrote that his abstract paintings in this form were meant to be rhetorical and were meant for the audience to seek its beauty. When most people hear the word “abstract” they believe the paintings to be pointless. On the contrary, abstract paintings beg the most questions, and cause the most controversy because everyone can interpret them differently. When I asked my family what they saw, each person (I asked four family members), created a different image in their brain. Whether they appreciated the beauty of the lines, or tried to create something concrete out of it, there were differing arguments, with no true side of what was right and what was wrong.

Although “Station” is filled with “random” lines and colors, there is a background full of structure. A grey pipe-like shape goes from the bottom left, up, makes a perfect ninety-degree turn, and then goes from left to right across the top. It is so perfect, it almost seems out of place in comparison to the rest of the painting. It doesn’t belong. However, I believe that Richter is asking us to take a deeper look. In the middle of the craziness, there is structure, just like in life. Although it is sometimes interrupted by other colors and strokes, the structure stays right and true. “Form is all we have to help us cope with fundamentally chaotic facts and assaults” (Nielsen, 2008). The other piece of the painting that calls attention to structure is the red stripe across the middle of “Station”, which instantly attracts the eye and calls attention to itself. While many of the other strokes are self-cancelling, this red stripe is blaring and loud, begging to be seen. I think this one stroke makes the entire painting. It is the one constant stroke; it is also is the defining part of “Station”. While the grey, perfect, pipe-like structure stays right and true, it blends into the background, whereas the red line can’t be hidden. It’s like a bust of passion that can’t be tamed, and is the determining personality trait.

In comparison to these strong, definite lines, the rest of the painting seems to have no direction. Richter said that these lines came from a method of painting where he would continuously paint different layers and scrape off certain sections if needed. This, he claimed “allows him to react to a painting as it is created, to appreciate the uncertainty of the process without relinquishing control… whether to display the painting or destroy it is his choice and his responsibility. Neither the ideological pressures of his youth nor the market economy of his maturity will have a say”(Cole, 2013). Richter believes that the semblance of the world is not given, but that the painter must fabricate it. Therefore, although abstract painting might seem to have no rhyme or reason, it is more powerful than we realize, especially with artists behind the brush like Richter. (Foster, 2003)