Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality THYRA E. KNAPP University of North Dakota Paintings with innocuous titles such as Onkel Rudi, Tante Marianne, and Herr Heyde would not, on first consideration, immediately suggest content inextricably linked to Germany’s troubled past; however, that is precisely what they deliver. These, and other celebrated works created over the last half century, have helped to establish Gerhard Richter as «the world’s most famous living painter» (Baker n. pag.). Commemorating Richter’s eightieth birthday in 2012, both the Panorama exhibition at the Neue und Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and Corinna Belz’s documentary Gerhard Richter Painting (2011) allowed viewers to revisit his œuvre with retrospectives featuring an impressive variety of styles. When viewed together, the red thread connecting the majority of his works - ranging from photo paintings to abstracted overpaintings - is their aesthetic ambiguity; whether created with gray areas, blurring, or squeegeed layers, Richter’s characteristically obscure paintings both attract and repel the viewer’s gaze, requiring more than a cursory glance and providing no obvious answers. Time and again, «Richter tests our experience and knowledge of reality through our capacity to see: he unsettles our habits of seeing and knowing […] by contrary actions of both giving and taking away, of simultaneously stating and denying» (Nasgaard 33). While his complex aesthetic may be read as an attempt to avoid political engagement, the artist’s blurred images actually invite engaged contemplation. Distancing himself from the notion of the elite aesthete, Richter realizes that his works have a very real function in the contemporary world: «[A] painting can help us to think something that goes beyond this senseless existence. That’s something art can do» (Storr, Doubt and Belief 183). This essay posits that, for Richter, the moral act of painting involves the creation of an ambiguous space in which the viewer is able to (re)consider not only the image itself, but also her/ his relationship to what is being depicted. With regard to his photo paintings, this takes place by means of an intricate double mediation: «[E]s geht im Folgenden um Fragen zur doppelten Repräsentation der Fotomalereien und ihrer sozialen sowie ästhetischen Kontexte - also um den anscheinend einfachen Sachverhalt, dass in den Bildern Richters wiederum Bilder erscheinen, die auf Bilder verweisen» (Rubel 48). 96 Thyra E. Knapp Richter’s photo paintings begin with personal photos, press clippings, or police photos that may or may not be in clear focus. He then paints the photo, not creating a work of photorealism - because the painting should not look exactly like the original photo - but rather an approximation or interpretation of the first image. By deliberately blurring lines and strategically utilizing various shades of gray, Richter obfuscates his own visual language, creating instead a space for critical dialogue. As Ulrich Meurer states, the artist does this «not to depict [the subject] more clearly (a cliché of art criticism), but to make room for a thought which neither reality nor its images can provide and which does not exist outside or without the painting» (193). Thus, these incomplete-looking, blurry representations of once-familiar objects and people challenge the viewer, transforming her/ him into a sort of detective: Vor allem aber macht sie aus jedem Betrachter einen Detektiv, der davon träumt, auf dem Foto doch noch das entscheidende Indiz zu entdecken, das Aufschluß über das Unvorstellbare gibt, was kurz darauf eintreten wird. So sind es unscharfe Bilder, die die größte Faszination ausüben und zahllose neugierige Augen nicht mehr zur Ruhe kommen lassen. (Ullrich 7) Perhaps most important about this detective work is the fact that the clues provided in the images are meant to transmit information about the unimaginable, inconceivable, and unthinkable. Because, as Richter himself states, «[p]ainting is the making of an analogy for something nonvisual and incomprehensible: giving it form and bringing it within reach» (qtd. in Elger, A Life 311), his works are able to explore controversial subjects of the Third Reich and the German Autumn, portraying them with blurred lines and incomplete forms so that the viewer can gather her/ his own evidence and proclaim her/ his own verdict. While Richter’s obfuscations encourage individual exploration and the formation of independent opinion, there is something undeniably provocative about the subjects the painter chooses to engage. With regard to the works discussed here, it is not only the individual canvasses that are of sociohistorical significance, but also their consideration as groups or cycles. This discussion focuses on three such groups (or cycles) of paintings: Onkel Rudi (1965), Tante Marianne (1965), Herr Heyde (1965); 48 Porträts (1971-72); 18.-Oktober 1977 (March - November 1988). These groups have been selected to demonstrate that although Richter invites each viewer to draw her/ his own conclusions, he has also chosen to purposefully and critically engage with contentious events from Germany’s troubled past and present. Born in Dresden in 1932, Gerhard Richter grew up under National Socialism, and as many adolescent boys of his generation, was a member of the Hitler Youth (Elger, Maler 9-10). During the war, Richter’s family moved from Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 97 the city to the countryside, ultimately settling in Waltersdorf, a village located within the Soviet occupation zone (Elger, Maler 12). After being turned down by the Dresden Art Academy following his first application, Richter took a job with a team charged with creating banners for the Communist East German government - an occupation that would certainly come to inform his strong stance against the use of ideology in art (Storr, Forty Years 20). Richter’s aesthetic would also be affected by his eventual acceptance to the academy, where he completed the five-year curriculum in the mural department, graduating with a work of Social Realism entitled Lebensfreude (1956) (Storr, Forty Years 21). After viewing the works of artists such as Jackson Pollock and Lucio Fontana at the Documenta 2 (an art exhibition held once every five years) in Kassel in 1959, the young painter’s eyes were opened to modern art, inspiring him to leave the German Democratic Republic for the West (Storr, Forty Years 22). Fig. 1: Gerhard Richter, Lebensfreude, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden 1956 In 1961, just before construction of the Berlin Wall began, Richter immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany (Nasgaard 34). At the recommendation of a friend, the painter enrolled in the Düsseldorf Art Academy and began to immerse himself in the works of his contemporaries. Both Düsseldorf and Köln had become hubs for the postwar experimental art scene, and Richter 98 Thyra E. Knapp had the opportunity to meet many young artists and try his own hand at pop art, surrealism, and photorealism (Nasgaard 34). Despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that Richter was living in the midst of Konrad Adenauer’s West German Wirtschaftswunder, an existence diametrically opposed to what he had known in the East, the artist became wary of both socioeconomic extremes. As Robert Storr notes, «thirteen years of living under Nazi rule and sixteen years living under Communist Party discipline had inoculated [Richter] against totalizing ideology» (Doubt and Belief 238). This deep distrust of ideological hegemony could be one explanation for Richter’s attempt to find a moral approach to painting, leading to his third way, located beyond socialist and capitalist paradigms. Richter achieves this third way oftentimes by stripping away both color and finite delineations. In the case of many of his photo paintings, the artist reduces the color spectrum to gray scale, removing the emotions associated with specific color tones. Additionally, Reinhard Spieler notes that «when Richter eliminates color from his paintings and restricts himself to shades of gray, he forces the viewer to take a consciously less sensuous and more intellectual approach» (11). The painter’s own explanation for his predominate use of gray is highly intellectualized: «It makes no statement whatever; it evokes neither feelings nor associations […]. It has the capacity that no other color has, to make ‹nothing› visible. To me, gray is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, non-commitment, absence of opinion, absences of shape» (qtd. in Spieler 11). Regardless of such claims of neutrality, Richter nevertheless chooses to make ‹nothing› visible, an act one can argue is not at all indifferent. The painter further strives to neutralize his works by blurring the shapes defined by shades of gray: «I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect» (qtd. in Obrist 37). In the case of the equality of blurred images, the fuzziness of the blur will not allow the viewer’s eye to rest on one specific object. The brain and the eyes conspire to find identifiable shapes (people and objects) on which to focus the gaze, and when there is none, the picture plane dissolves into confusion. Richter’s second desire, to transform the appearance of an artistic creation to one of a mechanical reproduction, is also understandable with regard to his need for indifference. If the image is a result of technology, it is believed to be objective and devoid of political ideology. Richter’s objective aesthetic choices to use gray and blur the lines lend themselves particularly well to the works discussed here as they are photo paintings; the viewer has seen and expects to see photos both in shades of Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 99 gray and out of focus. Furthermore, even in today’s world of digitally enhanced photography, there remains a belief that photographic images are innately objective and free of bias. As Julia Gelshorn observes, «[b]y copying photographs, generally understood as the perfect recorders of reality, Richter achieves a high ‹iconic tension› between transparency and opacity, that is between a painting’s representational qualities and its material two-dimensionality» (27-29). Undeniably, part of the attraction to a Richter photo painting is the appearance that it is actually a photograph. When it is discovered that the «photo» is in fact a painting, and that the blurred image cannot be focused into a comprehensibly clear composition, the viewer is forced to consider the artwork even more closely: «Photo-painting acts to add a moment of cognitive reflection, of historical and representational self-consciousness, to the experience of the photographic image. It creates a space and a time for reflection upon that image which is qualitatively different from that of the photograph itself, haunted as such experience is by the trace of the object» (Osborne 107). It would seem that this is precisely Richter’s intent, particularly when one considers the photographs that serve as source materials here. Because Richter has chosen to engage with such difficult and emotion-laden historical subjects as the Third Reich and the German Autumn, his break with the art historical tradition of strict mimesis is a necessary one. Much in the vein of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, and in what Gertrud Koch refers to as «cold distanciation,» Richter opts for intellectual detachment over emotional embroilment («Richter-Scale» 142). Although the painter’s canvasses invariably draw the viewer near, his technical mediations push the viewer away again, thus creating tension. Detlef Hoffmann explains: «Grenzen, Oberflächen sind auch die Formen der Distanzierung. Das Spannungsverhältnis von Nähe und Ferne, von Annäherung und Unerreichbarkeit, die alle Arbeit am Thema Erinnerung bestimmt, ist von Gerhard Richter eindrücklich thematisiert» (267). In the works discussed here, which engage with controversial and troubling elements of Germany’s past and present, Richter deliberately creates images that both attract and repel, fostering a contemplative tension in which the viewer is able to better grapple with lingering questions of memory, identity, and morality. The act of attracting and repelling ends with the viewer but begins with the artist himself. Having established early on that his paintings would have nothing to do with political ideology, Richter searched for suitably objective subjects. At the beginning of his career, this proved problematic until his discovery of photographs as inspiration: «In 1962 I found my first escape hatch: by painting from photographs, I was relieved of the need to choose or construct a subject» (qtd. in Obrist 130). Although the young painter may have 100 Thyra E. Knapp convinced himself of the objectivity of photographs, it is clear to the contemporary viewer that Richter, in actuality, deliberately chose subjects in order to inspire and provoke contemplation. Contrary to his assertion that he «had to choose photographs, of course; but [he] could do that in a way that avoided any commitment to the subject, by using motifs which had very little image to them and which were anachronistic,» the very act of selecting a photograph is as subjective as choosing any object or person to paint from life (qtd. in Obrist 130). In fact, Hoffmann agrees that Richter’s use of photographs jettisons neither the subjectivity of his works nor their engagement with history: «Im Gegensatz zu manchen Interpreten sehe ich in Gerhard Richters Bildern eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit Geschichte. […] Erst die Übersetzung der Photos in die Unschärfe der Malerei macht Vorlage und Gemälde zu historischen Gebilden» (263). This is particularly evident in the three collections discussed here in which Richter has chosen to paint photographs of subjects representing the most controversial facets of twentieth-century German history. The first group addresses the complicated relationship of the Second Generation (postwar generation) to Germany’s National Socialist past. Beginning with two family photographs and one picture from a press clipping, these paintings have the most personal resonance of those investigated here with the artist himself. With Onkel Rudi, Tante Marianne, and Herr Heyde, Richter creates a (at the outset perhaps unintentional) triptych of images exploring the roles of victim and oppressor during the Third Reich. Richter painted all three in 1965, twenty years after the end of the Second World War, and right before his generation began to publically question the actions of their parents under Hitler’s regime. The first piece, Onkel Rudi, is the blurred portrait of a Wehrmacht officer, who seems to enjoy being photographed (Hoffmann 254). One initially notes the man’s smiling countenance, then the stiff, formal uniform, creating a sense of dissonance. As Hoffmann states, this tension occurs because this military figure does not lend itself to portrayal in soft focus: «Das Motiv verträgt sich schlecht mit der Unschärfe. Motiv und Unschärfe der Oberfläche konkurrieren miteinander; wer sich auf beides einläßt, kann sich in ein unlösbares Problem verwickeln» (254). The «softening» of this soldier, pictured here with a broad smile and unassuming posture, creates a conflict between form and content; however, the disjuncture occurs on multiple registers. Richter’s blurring not only obscures the clean lines of military precision, visually moderating the brutality of the Third Reich, but also problematizes the complications of personal relationships and historical legacies. Koch observes: Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 101 Darum gerät Onkel Rudi so gespenstisch: was in den grauen Verwischungen des Bildes von ihm hängen geblieben ist, kennzeichnet ihn genau als Typus. Der lachende Mann in der Ausgehuniform der Wehrmacht, der vermutliche Offizier mit dem vermutbaren Hakenkreuz an der Mütze, ist so unheimlich, weil er einerseits ‹Onkel Rudi› ist, der, weil er auf einem Photo so abgebildet gewesen zu scheint, als eine individuelle Person mitgedacht werden muß, und diese gleichzeitig auf den Typus, eben ‹Onkel Rudi› hin dekonstruiert wird. («Das offene Geheimnis» 19) Fig. 2: Gerhard Richter, Onkel Rudi, Lidice Gallery, Lidice, Czech Republic 1965 This Onkel Rudi is in fact Richter’s maternal uncle, Rudolf Schönfelder, who served as an officer in the Wehrmacht until his death in 1944 (Elger, Maler 177). Because Richter’s own father could neither be taken seriously nor respected (his wife accused him of adultery and fathering children outside their marriage), Uncle Rudi was regarded as both father figure and well-respected hero: «Das war der Bruder meiner Mutter, der Liebling der Familie. Von dem wurde viel gesprochen, und der wurde mir als Held präsentiert» (qtd. in Elger, Maler 175). Giving this painting (featuring the smiling officer with what appears to be a swastika on his hat) a title like Onkel Rudi points the viewer to the ambivalence so many Germans felt after the war. How does one reconcile 102 Thyra E. Knapp the identities and memories of much-loved family members who fought for their country with the atrocities perpetrated under the Third Reich? Through the blurred lines of the painting, one sees reflected the seemingly antipodal concepts of remembering and forgetting, loving uncle and complicit soldier: «Das Gemälde löst den Helden auf wie eine harte Substanz im Wasser. Nicht das Was, sondern das Wie der Erinnerung ist [Richters] Thema» (Hoffmann 268). In contrast to Onkel Rudi, Tante Marianne appears quite innocent at first glance. Perhaps because of this, Marianne has not received nearly the critical attention that Rudi has, but when considering the theme of ambivalence and memory, this work certainly deserves further exploration. Based on another personal family photo, this image shows the artist as an infant and his then fourteen-year-old aunt. Richter’s characteristic gray scale shades the background into the distance, while a pale triangle of light is pulled into the foreground. At the apex is Richter’s aunt, whose head bows slightly forward, in deference to the child on her lap. Fig. 3: Gerhard Richter, Tante Marianne, 1965, sold at auction in 2006 for nearly $4,000,000 Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 103 Without knowing the history behind the image, it would be impossible to understand how this composition relates to Onkel Rudi and Herr Heyde; however, with further investigation, one learns that Marianne suffered from schizophrenia and in 1945 fell victim to the Nazi practice of euthanizing the mentally ill (Elger, Maler 172). By choosing an image in which Aunt Marianne and the infant Richter could be read as a ‹Madonna and Child› for the twentieth century, the artist underscores the innocence and tenderness of the scene, thereby adding to the complexity of Richter’s own family dynamic - and to the case for other German families still coming to terms with their own histories. The piece linking Rudi and Marianne is one based on a press photo of psychologist Dr. Werner Heyde, one of the initiators of the Nazi T-4 (Tiergartenstraße 4) Euthanasia Program. This photo shows Dr. Heyde being taken into police custody in November of 1959. Up until he turned himself in to the authorities, the psychologist had been living in Germany and practicing medicine under an assumed name. Just before he was to stand trial for his war crimes, and one year before Richter would paint this picture, Heyde committed suicide (Elger, Maler 172). By titling the painting Herr Heyde rather than Dr. Heyde, Richter strips the psychologist of his credentials, reducing him to the criminal that he is. As with the other two paintings, this composition is characterized by the blurred effect for which Richter is so well known. Two men are seen in profile, and the caption tells us that Heyde has surrendered, inviting the viewer to inquire about his crimes. The simple fact Richter provides this image with a caption sets it apart, visually and didactically, from the other two. While the source images for Rudi and Marianne are family photographs, the origin of this painting, with its official looking caption, lends authority while simultaneously distancing itself from the viewer. As Gelshorn notes: Richter’s use of blurred images, frames, and writing in his paintings is not only intended to draw the viewer’s attention to the mediating and other functional qualities of painting, but also represents an explicit reference to the original source. This demarcation of an image as a visual quotation is analogous to setting quotation marks to frame a verbal quote in a text. In demonstrating the relationship of a painting to another picture by revealing the process by which an image is transposed from one medium to another, Richter intrudes upon, or at least calls into question, the viewer’s naive, unobstructed perspective. Richter’s ‹appropriations› emphasize the fact that both they and their models serve as mediators. (29) In the case of this grouping, Richter appropriates the public image of a doctor whose euthanasia program was sponsored by Nazi officials and directly resulted in the death of his aunt. By choosing to mediate the image of Herr 104 Thyra E. Knapp Heyde, Richter pulls the doctor into his own family’s private history while at the same time exposing him to the public at large. Fig. 4: Gerhard Richter, Herr Heyde, 1965, sold at auction in 2006 for $2,800,000 When considering all three paintings together, one finds a profound connection between victim and perpetrator; the everyday manifestations of the Third Reich played out through the example of one family. Richter’s maternal uncle shows the smile and pride of a young Wehrmacht officer, while his aunt stands as one of the millions of innocent victims of the regime for which he was fighting. Richter connects them with the image of Heyde, showing how the fate of his aunt and uncle - this unsuspecting brother and sister - are diabolically linked. While Richter was clearly aware of who Rudi and Marianne were, when asked if the artist knew that Herr Heyde was the conspicuous connection between them when he painted him, he responds: «I am sure I knew it. But I repressed it right away, and it became a picture like any other […]. I did not want to be part of the faction that accused. I do not belong to these who present themselves as anti-fascists, because I am not. I am also not a fascist» (qtd. in Storr, Doubt and Belief 164). Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 105 Richter’s assertion that he is neither anti-fascist nor fascist supports the ambiguity so characteristic of his œuvre, yet his series 48 Porträts can be seen (at least in its first exhibition) as an anti-fascist piece. Begun in 1971 and displayed in the Germany Pavilion (a structure redesigned by Ernst Haiger in 1938) at the 36th Venice Biennial in 1972, this collection of paintings should be read not only as a statement on the portrait genre, but also the iconographic tradition of fascist regimes (see Elger, Maler). Dieter Honisch’s description of the work in the catalogue for the Venice exhibition declares its political connotations: «Männer, die durch ihre Arbeit die Welt verändert haben und nun, kaum wiedererkannt, ein Lexikondasein führen, werden von Richter hervorgeholt, um in der faschistischen und einer falschen Repräsentationsvorstellung dienenden Architektur des deutschen Pavillons Probleme aktueller Malerei vorzuführen» (qtd. in Elger, Maler 249). In the place of politicians, Richter’s pantheon of modernity is comprised of physicists (Max Planck, Albert Einstein), authors (Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke), composers (Gustav Mahler, Igor Strawinski), and other learned men who helped to define the twentieth century. It is interesting to note that although there are creative figures on this list, there are no painters or sculptors, and among these luminaries there is not a woman to be found, something Richter attributes to his desire to maintain a certain anonymous, masculine aesthetic. Fig. 5: Gerhard Richter, 48 Porträts, Venice Biennial, 1972 The reference to a fascist aesthetic - one would expect to see likenesses of Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini displayed in this manner - is heightened by the fact that Richter’s forty-eight paintings were hung around the large room in a continuous manner evoking a frieze. Placed at a height above eye level, visitors were forced to look up at the men in the portraits, thus establishing a position of reverence (Elger, Maler 247-48). Furthermore, in order to cre- 106 Thyra E. Knapp ate the effect of focused attention toward the center of the room, the artist chose source portraits based on the angle of their individual visages: «Die Reihenfolge der Tafeln ordnet Gerhard Richter nach der Blickrichtung der Dargestellten. Zu beiden Seiten des Eingangs und mittig auf der gegenüberliegenden Wand hängen die Bilder mit den frontal dargestellten Personen» (Elger, Maler 247-48). With images ranging from near profile depictions to direct frontal views, Richter’s portraits command attention and guide the visitor’s gaze toward the center of the space. Fig. 6: Gerhard Richter, Franz Kafka, Museum Ludwig, Cologne 1971/ 1972 When shown in Venice, this powerful arrangement featured the portrait of writer Franz Kafka in the center of the display. Author of works such as Die Verwandlung, Das Urteil, and In der Strafkolonie, Kafka is perhaps one of the best-known men in this collection, and his dark countenance - one half of which swims in shadow - seems to cast an uneasy presence on the whole gallery. With such detailed calculations of positioning and facial angles, it seems unlikely that Richter did not intend Kafka’s centrality over the other figures, yet the artist denies this assertion so vehemently that he never again installed 48-Porträts in this particular configuration: Richter geht dabei so weit, die Hängung nach der Eröffnung der Biennale noch einmal zu korrigieren, weil er Sorge hat, die Plazierung des Bildnisses von Franz Kafka an hervorgehobener Position, mitten auf der dem Eingang gegenüberliegenden Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 107 zentralen Wand, könne ihm als eine perönliche Vorliebe ausgelegt werden: «Weil Kafka eine Lieblingsfigur und somit zu bedeutend ist. Der relative unbekannte Blackett war mir da lieber», rechtfertigt Gerhard Richter 1990 gegenüber Susanne Ehrenfried seine nachträgliche Korrektur der Präsentation. (Elger, Maler 248) Despite his argument to the contrary, one could argue that Richter chose this prime position for Kafka with good reason, replacing the expected dictatorial leader with a man known for creating literary worlds of psychological exploration and brutal alienation. Perhaps with this inaugural grouping, Richter intended to invite viewers to question whether their (political) leaders could be trusted or whether they are just creating fictional worlds in which their citizens are expected to meet with the same absurdity and hopelessness found in Kafka’s works. Whatever his specific intent, Richter’s attention to detail with regard to every other element of this obliquely anti-fascist work seems to suggest that Kafka’s positioning at the center of this pantheon of great men was anything but accidental. The final series of paintings discussed here moves from an oblique critique of fascism to the politically charged, very specific subject of domestic terrorism. Richter’s 18. Oktober 1977 consists of fifteen paintings depicting members, actions, and objects belonging to the Baader-Meinhof group. As with the other photo paintings, there seems to exist a disjuncture between Richter’s claim of nonpolitical art and the reality of the images, resulting in what Desa Philippi notes as the tension created by diametrically opposed forces: There remains something deeply troubling about this installation that seems to simultaneously announce and cancel a possible relation between art and politics. October 18, 1977 does not narrate - if that were at all possible - the events it evokes. It presents versions and variations on the theme of a particular kind of archival material. The origin of these images refers us to other images, which in turn suggest representations that are not on view and not for viewing. (120) Richter’s ambiguity thereby creates a self-reflexivity that opens his paintings to both that which is seen, and that which lies beneath the surface. Painted from March to November of 1988, these blurred images present various views on Germany’s Rote Armee Faktion (see Storr’s monograph on the cycle). This band of left-wing terrorists was founded in 1970 and grew out of the student movements of the late 1960s. The founders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, began their protests with letters and bombs, but the violence quickly escalated and more than thirty deaths have since been attributed to the group. What started as a reaction to Germany’s quick economic recovery from World War II and the denial of a generation as to what took place during the Third Reich, the increasingly violent actions of the Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) were admired by their sympathizers, questioned by the majority of 108 Thyra E. Knapp German citizens, and condemned by the government and law enforcement; an ambivalence reflected in the works themselves. After evading the police for two turbulent years, several of the core members (Baader, Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins, and Jan-Carl Raspe) were caught and arrested in June of 1972. The trial began in 1975 in Stammheim Prison, where the members were being held, and before it could be concluded, Meinhof, Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe committed suicide. Conspiracy theories abound regarding the question of whether the members had a suicide pact - for Baader, Ensslin and Raspe all died on 18-October 1977 - or if the government was somehow involved in their deaths. The unsettling and divisive events of the German Autumn proved difficult for the entire country, and it would seem that Richter was speaking for many Germans when, a decade later, he stated: «The deaths of the terrorists, and the related events both before and after, stand for a horror that distressed me and has haunted me as unfinished business ever since, despite all my efforts to suppress it» (qtd. in Obrist 173-74). As an artist, Richter was uniquely able to take these feelings of uneasiness and uncertainty and translate them into visual expression; his externalization of internalized incomprehension became art objects viewers could share. The painter admits: «It is impossible for me to interpret the pictures. That is: in the first place they are too emotional; they are, if possible, an expression of speechless emotion. They are the almost forlorn attempt to give shape to feelings of compassion, grief and horror,» thus making a space for «understanding those events, being able to live with them» (qtd. in Obrist 174). One of the greatest obstacles preventing Germans from being able to «understand» and «live with» the realities of domestic terrorism created by the Baader-Meinhof group is certainly connected to the victim/ oppressor dichotomy witnessed following the end of World War II. Richter explains: If people want to see these people [terrorists] hanged as criminals, that’s only part of it: there’s something else that puts an additional fear into people, namely that they themselves are terrorists. And that is forbidden. So this terrorism inside all of us, that’s what generates the rage and fear, and that’s what I don’t want, any more than I want the policemen inside myself - there’s never just one side to us. We’re always both: the State and the terrorist. (qtd. in Obrist 186) The conflict that each of us ostensibly carries within ourselves is visually manifested in the depiction of blurred distinctness. One expects photographs, particularly the black-and-white variety, to record truth: «There’s something documentary about them. More than any other kind of depiction, you believe in them» (qtd. in Obrist 218). However, Richter uses the appearance of documentary photographs to attract the viewer to his image, which then blurs the Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 109 truth, requiring the audience to draw its own conclusions in the face of this painted ambiguity. From an innocent portrait of Meinhof as a young woman to depictions of Baader and Ensslin found dead, Richter bases his paintings on photographs whose subjects range from the banal to the macabre. Even in the case of objects that at first seem harmless, such as a record player, the informed viewer is immediately aware that the pistol that took Baader’s life was smuggled into the prison in its base. It is precisely the artist’s selection of such diverse subjects within the cycle that makes this collection obliquely political. What does the artist want to say with these images - and the others in the series - portraying the deaths of these left-wing radical terrorists? Is he mourning their loss, or proclaiming the futility of their lives? Perhaps he is doing both simultaneously, again furthering the cause for ambivalence. Although each of the fifteen individual paintings is able to stand on its own, and when exhibited together they form a major installation addressing the German Autumn, I am focusing here on only two images, Zelle and Erhängte. Zelle depicts Baader’s vacant prison cell at Stammheim; divided nearly down the middle, white space on the left is balanced by dark, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the right. At first glance, and particularly with the heavy blur, this small room could easily be mistaken for a Studentenbude, a utilitarian space filled with books. The association of prison cell to dorm room seems a natural one, especially when one recalls that the RAF grew out of the student movements of the late 1960s. Yet, when Zelle is viewed next to Erhängte, which shows Gudrun Ensslin hanged in her cell, a dialogue between the two images is created. What appears to be an overcoat hanging on the left in Zelle is mundane on its own, but when seen in reference to Erhängte, it eerily echoes the body of Ensslin hanging limply in her cell. By reading these two paintings against one another, Zelle seems to point to the origin of the radical movement (revolutionary ideas represented by the many books) while Erhängte represents its tragic end (violence culminating in a hanging). Michael Kelly argues that with these paintings, Richter is creating a space for grief caused by this violence: «This space is not only metaphorical; it is quite concrete in the sense that the public exhibition of the Baader-Meinhof paintings in a museum (or gallery) is a performative grieving affair, allowing viewers to experience the series as if they were attending a wake or funeral» (259). At this wake, presented through the mediation of Richter’s blurred visions, the horrific images of these terrorists are made bearable. According to Kelly, the act of painting these subjects «[gives] him a voice about them so that he would no longer be a ‹mute spectator› in their presence. If horror reduces us to silence, art as mediation allows us to get our voices back. 110 Thyra E. Knapp Fig. 8: Gerhard Richter, Erhängte, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988 Fig. 7: Gerhard Richter, Zelle, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988 Gerhard Richter and the Ambiguous Aesthetics of Morality 111 This is the Richter Effect, as described by Richter himself» (261). While it is true that Richter’s works do not promote any particular ideology, the artist nevertheless asks the viewer to consider the relationships between images he creates and draw one’s own conclusions about politically charged events. As Kelly notes: «[Richter] saw a need to express something more than certain innocence and certain guilt, clear victims and clear criminals. It is not that he wanted to blur these distinctions; rather, he wanted to open up discussion of issues that the rush to certainty and closure had shut down» (272). In each of the instances explored here, Richter uses the blur to provoke and unsettle, pushing the viewer to revisit her/ his own relationship to the past. In his own words, Richter claims to «blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant» (qtd. in Obrist 37), but the equalization only happens within the frame, once a subject has been chosen. Before this can happen, the painter gives significant thought to the subjects he represents: «The object is so important to me that I take a great deal of trouble over my choice of subjects. It is so important that I paint it» (qtd. in Obrist 58). As demonstrated, Richter has repeatedly chosen to portray subjects that were monumental in shaping the sociohistorical context of modern Germany. His works, while not ideologically dogmatic, do indeed engage politically charged themes. With the selection of particular subjects, Richter points the viewer toward consideration of difficult events; with the intricate double mediation of these photo paintings, Richter creates an ambiguous space in which the viewer is able to arrive at her/ his own understanding of not only the artwork itself, but also the event that inspired it. By utilizing gray scale and blurring lines to create this space, Gerhard Richter upholds his own morality of painting: the artist does not tell the viewer what to think, he simply inspires her/ him to do so. Works Cited Baker, Kenneth. «‹Gerhard Richter Painting› Review: An Inside Look.» sfgate.com. San Francisco Chronicle, 4 May 2012. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. Gerhard Richter Painting. Dir. Corinna Belz. Kino Lorber, 2011. Elger, Dietmar. Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. -. Gerhard Richter, Maler. Cologne: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, 2002. Gelshorn, Julia. «Nachbilder. Zu Gerhard Richters visuellem Repertoire.» Gerhard Richter: Ohne Farbe. Ed. Reinhard Spieler. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005. 24-38. Hoffmann, Detlef. «Die Schärfe der Unschärfe - Zum Beispiel: ‹Onkel Rudi› von Gerhard Richter.» Geschichte und bildende Kunst. Ed. Mosche Zuckermann. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006. 254-68. 112 Thyra E. Knapp Kelly, Michael. «The Richter Effect on the Regeneration of Aesthetics.» Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices from Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice. Ed. Francis Halsall et al. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009. 256-73. Koch, Gertrud. «The Richter-Scale of Blur.» October 62 (1992): 133-42. -. «Das offene Geheimnis: Gerhard Richter und die Oberflächen der Moderne.» Wahrnehmung, Blick, Perspektive: Kunst und Psychoanalyse. Tagung im Sigmund- Freud-Institut am 30. April 1995. Falk Berger, Karl Clausberg, Edda Hevers, Gertrud Koch, and Christian Schneider. Münster: LIT Verlag, 1998. 11-25. Meurer, Ulrich. «Double-mediated Terrorism: Gerhard Richter and Don DeLillo’s ‹Baader- Meinhof.›» Literature and Terrorism. Ed. Michael C. Frank. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. 99-117. Nasgaard, Roald. «Gerhard Richter.» Gerhard Richter: Paintings. Ed. Terry A. Neff. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988. 31-36. Obrist, Hans-Ulrich, ed. Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. Osborne, Peter. «Painting Negation: Gerhard Richter’s Negatives.» October 62 (1992): 103-13. Philippi, Desa. «Moments of Interpretation.» October 62 (1992): 115-22. Rubel, Dietmar. «Die Fotografie (un)erträglich machen: Gerhard Richter gesehen mit W.G. Sebald.» Sechs Vorträge über Gerhard Richter. Ed. Dietmar Elger and Jürgen Müller. Dresden: König, 2007. 47-69. Spieler, Reinhard. «Ohne Farbe.» Gerhard Richter: Ohne Farbe. Ed. Reinhard Spieler. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005. 8-23. Storr, Robert. Gerhard Richter: Doubt and Belief in Painting. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2003. -. Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting. New York: Art Publishers, 2002. -. Gerhard Richter: October 18, 1977. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2000. Ullrich, Wolfgang. Die Geschichte der Unschärfe. Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 2002.