Bombers 1963

Gerhard Richter made this painting, "Bombers," using oils, and with a photographic approach, which is already a kind of distancing. It’s like, how do you paint a photo? I find myself looking at how he blurs the image, smearing the paint to create a sense of movement and ambiguity. Is it about concealing or revealing? There is no easy answer. Those long vertical strokes suggesting falling bombs almost appear to function as serial abstraction. But their meaning returns in the shadow of the image as a whole. The grayscale palette adds to the unsettling feeling, like an old film reel. Richter's choice seems like a way of processing or reflecting on it, rather than simply representing it. He’s often playing with these kinds of translations—between photography and painting, abstraction and representation, personal and political. He is also continuing the conversation between art and photography as artists have done over the last century, which makes me think of Sigmar Polke. There are no answers, only approaches.