Author: Sante Scardillo --- Date: 11/12/95--- Copyright: ThingReviews NYC

Gerhardt Richter
Atlas
Dia Center for the Arts
548 West 22nd St., NYC
Thru Spring '96


For the third time in a row now I've found myself spending most of my time at a Dia opening away from the bar, and not because drinks are no longer free. During the opening of the Flavin show I stumbled again on Atlas, which I had not visited since its own opening. After a few minutes in the company of Jessica Stockholder's installation (By the way, did anybody read Kimmelmann's review of it? Did he? "Ms. Stockholder's art, increasingly buoyant and big, is approaching a sort of esthetic epiphany." Yeah, sort of. Like, this statement is sort of great) somebody suggested "let's go to the Richter show." Right! This is the most inspiring show I have seen at the Dia. Endless displays of framed series of snapshots taken by the artist reveal an uninhibited, passionate way of looking at the world that is lost in his painting. The raw delicacy of the subjects go from the lyrical to the sublime to the ordinary: skulls and candles, apples, baby daughter, wife, lovers, sky, aerial views. All subjects are treated with unpretentious freshness which makes them poignantly intense.

-Sante Scardillo


see also:
(Sante Scardillo: Me, as a critic, -vs- Me, as an artist )



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Brian Morgan -- library@literascape.com
Responds:

Yeah, the piece is great, but didn't Atlas DO anything to you, apart from causing you to reflect on the loss of life from Richter's painting? Didn't it suggest anything to you--generate thoughts? Surely you must have more to say on the subject--or is the suitably unpretentious review of an unpretentious piece simply, "Fantastic"? (Perhaps this is what the review-snippets on movie posters really are: the ideal, unpretentious approach. The apothesis of the art of communication.)