In 2000 Gerhard Richter made Erster Blick, an offset edition of an enlarged newspaper clipping from 26 July 2000 reporting the Zentrum für Elektronische Korrelationen und Magnetismus at Universität Augsburg’s Institut für Physik’s first imaging of the interior of a silizium (silicon) atom.
In 2016, I made Untitled (Erster Blick), an edition in graphite on an enlarged newspaper article from the Zentrum’s press archive, to mark the occasion of one of Richter’s Erster Blick coming up for auction during Frieze London.
The edition, which matched Richter’s, of 100, plus 20 Roman numeral copies, plus 10 trial proofs, plus 6 other trial proofs, did not sell out before the Richter came up for sale. Which, it didn’t, turns out, but the print coming up next week, July 16, at Wright in Chicago, definitely will.
To mark this joyous event, I am reopening the Untitled (Erster Blick) edition, making it available until the close of bidding on the Chicago print. You can order it/them below.
With 136 or so examples out there, I’m sure this isn’t the first Richter print to circulate since 2016, but it is the first I’ve noticed. Which is something I considered last night as I thought about re-marking this event. Or marking this event: another sale of another minor Richter print by someone I don’t know to someone else I [presumably] don’t know.
On the one hand, it highlights the mechanisms of attention in the art market, the turning of a transaction into a cultural event that accrues importance—and value—onto an object. I’m Nicole Kidman, and this is my Brancusi dance.
On the other, it purports to conjure a shared experience with art, or at least to mark it in memory; that time we [👀] all saw that Richter about expanding the limits of imagemaking. And that’s, I think, part of this work specifically, the recognition of a shared gesture of taking note of something, the way Richter cut a picture out of his Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung one morning. It was a common act that preceded his decision to mark it by transforming it into an artwork, and recirculating it.
Untitled (Erster Blick) began as a way of tracing that action backwards, to see the source and context of Richter’s first encounter, details of the work the market had sloughed off on their way to a sale timed to a fair. Revisiting the work—my reworking, that is—I realized I’d dropped some contextual details, too, though.
I still have a couple of proofs, but in 2016 I only printed what sold, for the number of people who had that purchasing experience. And looking at it now, I couldn’t figure out why it was the weird size it was. 38.6 x 27.3 cm is a dimension (D3) from Swedish adoption (SIS 014711 D4) of a retired extension of the original 1922 German standards for paper size, DIN 476, which became the basis for ISO 216, the A- and B- paper sizes in wide use now. Which turns out to be a different standard from the Nordic Broadsheet (40 x 55.7 cm) FAZ is printed on, so that’s not it. But then I realized it was also the exact enlargement of the A4 Zentrum pdf required to fit Richter’s print. D4 sits in between A4 and A3 as a geometric progression, keeping the same ratio of 1:√2. So Richter’s enlargement of his original clipping was based, not on its printed dimensions, or some percentage, but on the print’s paper dimensions, if that makes sense.
In Erster Blick, Richter was making a print, not a facsimile of the scrap above his desk. Whereas Untitled (Erster Blick) is very much intended as a facsimile of Richter’s print, or rather, its scale and graphic elements conjure that similitude, or preserve that option.
This idea first hit in 2014, when an incredible Cady Noland work on paper came up for sale, also during Frieze London. It was a cropped, unsigned photocopy from 1989 of Noland’s iconic Tanya. Changes in paper stock and xerography technologies notwithstanding, cutting away everything that made my print, Untitled (Tanya), authentic would destroy it, ofc, while leaving behind a perfect [sic] facsimile of Noland’s work.
Between now and a few minutes after 11:00AM CT July 16th, Erster Blick and Untitled (Erster Blick) offer the same potential: to get a real Richter and/or a real greg.org, or perhaps a simulacrum of the former by destroying the latter.
The Richter sold for $3,072, and this edition is again closed. Thanks all! Buy Untitled (Erster Blick), 2016/2026, ed. 100 &c.
[update: since one person who bought the 2016 edition asked, others might wonder. While you might like to commemorate this moment in our shared history anew, the only material difference between this print and the 2016 is a double date.]
16 July 2026, Lot 119, Gerhard Richter, Erster Blick, 2000, est. $2-3,000 [wright20]
Previously, related:
Untitled (Erster Blick), 2016
Untitled (Tanya), 2014