Overpainting (Brown) 1972

Curator: This is Gerhard Richter's "Overpainting (Brown)," currently held at the Harvard Art Museums. What do you make of it? Editor: Immediately, I’m struck by the density of the paint. It appears almost sculptural, a testament to the artist's labor and the sheer materiality of the medium. Curator: Indeed. The aggressive brushstrokes obscure, even obliterate, what might lie beneath. Does this act of covering up suggest a suppression of something, a buried history? Editor: Perhaps. Or it could be a pure exploration of process, a focus on the application of paint itself. Consider the tool marks, the visible record of the artist's hand. Curator: The 'brown' hints at earthiness, of something organic, but the overpainting is a kind of erasure. A visual metaphor maybe, for how memory itself is often obscured or rewritten. Editor: I see it as a deconstruction of painting, honestly. Richter strips away any pretense of representation, leaving only the raw materials and the gestures of making. Curator: A potent gesture, leaving us to ponder the nature of concealment and revelation. Editor: Exactly. It makes me consider what lies beneath the surface, literally and metaphorically.