The film "Gerhardt Richter Painting" is a gem. You get to see him in the process of painting, and subsequently get a brief glimpse of all the versions of a painting before he's "done". Sometimes I would want to yell stop and get him to stick with a version, but it was swiftly covered over, never to be seen again. Moment to moment the art changed, and that awareness was a lesson in itself. He didn't say much, as he thinks words are another form of language from art, so you cannot superimpose words on paintings. I agree with that idea. Yet words are our basic medium, so we struggle and incline ourselves that way. The film is quiet and introspective, the way the artist is known to be, and therefore I felt i understood him better by the end. He looks sixty, but must have been in his eighties when the film was made. It reminds you how physical painting is, and how good a shape it's kept him in.
The other day someone was saying in another life they'd like to be an athlete. I said I'd have liked to have been a painter. Art has been a major passion for me all my life. Art expresses for me what I cannot express verbally.
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