I find the maxim of not reading reviews of one's work to be much easier to live by when there are no reviews.
Because at least two takes on Richteriana have already been published, and I like the concept. It's reassuring but also a but unsettling. And then a little invigorating, to encounter other peoples' takes on your ideas.
In the Village Voice, James Hannaham called the Destroyed Richter Paintings "outlandish," which I took to be a good sign, even though I wouldn't--you know what, no, let's just let it hang out there:
While partially homage, this work invades the great man's privacy on at least two levels: first, by showing us images he apparently didn't want anyone to see, and second, by co-opting and outsourcing his technique.While I don't think that's literally true, the invasion of privacy part, I do think Hannaham is right to find an uneasiness in the images, not just whether they should exist, but whether they do or don't, and if so, how?
And also Jane Hu did a lot of context work on Richter, his art, his history, his control issues, and the larger Richter and Art Industrial Complexes themselves:
[T]he artist has destroyed or painted over many past works, in order, presumably, to maintain a narrative about his artistic trajectory that satisfies his present sense as a painter. Richter knows as well as anyone that art history traffics in selling a story, as much as it does in telling an image. While the first half of his career produced paintings that tried to approximate photographic realism, he later increasingly turned to abstraction. And in doing so, no matter what other aesthetic reasons he may have had, Richter not only has revised his own biography, but those of his paintings as well.Her discussion of David Diao's work Synecdoche, is particularly sharp. On its own, David's painting is amazing, but his wresting control of a vintage Benjamin Buchloh
The more I look at Synecdoche, the more it feels like the most important argument in the show.
