Marian’s Other Richters: Orchidee II (2)

Much like mourning, shopping never ends. And though several months have passed since we honored, ogled, and fervently bid on Marian’s Richters, with fall comes a new round of auctions to remind us of what we’ve lost, and what’s newly available.

a 1988 print between plexi of a gerhard richter painting of a photo of a full heavy bloom of orchids hanging off a pot on the left.
Orchidee II-II? Marian Goodman’s second Gerhard Richter edition, 1988, offset print on lightweight card between plexiglas, this one is ed. 21/25, the one last May was ed. 18/25

And if some of it feels familiar, that’s just how grief works. And art dealers, who apparently keep at least two examples from the edition for themselves. Orchidee II is both the title of the 1988 print-of-a-painting-in-plexi edition, and the number appearing in Marian Goodman’s collection. So far. If I’m the underbidder from last May’s $57,150 sale, I guess I’m glad to have another chance at a beautiful print. But I’m also asking just how many more of these specific Richters Marian had tucked away, if only for the possibility of staging a Germano Celant-style small utopia of celebration of the art multiple’s democratizing power, by buying them all.

the verso of a hiroshige woodblock print of a snowy evening scene in rural japan with houses and roofs in the little valley formed by trees on either side of the image. because it's the back, everything is faint because it's soaked through. a glitch in christie's sale of an otherwise unrelated marian goodman richter print
I normally shrink down images and rename them to give credit for their source, but I’m leaving the Christie’s filename of this Gerhard Richter/Utagawa Hiroshige glitch collab intact.

Or maybe this October example, ed. 21/25, is actually unique. Christie’s currently shows the verso of the Gerhard Richter print to be a snow scene from Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō by Utagawa Hiroshige. Which would be truly baller. And almost possible? Richter’s 1988 offset print is 11.5 x 14 5/8 in., and the woodblock on Hiroshige’s 1834 print is 10 x 14 5/8 in.

a spread from a gerhard richter book showing two sides of an ink drawing made by strategically having inks bleed through the paper. so they're similar, related, but not identical
recto/verso spread from Gerhard Richter’s November, the trade edition published by HENI

At first I thought this was an unusually faint or faded print, but it turns out the image is actually the Hiroshige verso; it shows the ink bleeding through the paper [plus the station number, 16, on the margin, in red]. This material- and absorbency-based image relationship resonates with Richter’s series of ink drawings November, from 2008. The recto/verso pairs are easy enough to see in the book; when they were first exhibited in 2013, the collection of 54 recto were on one wall, and 54 reproductions of the verso on the other.

a digital collage of gerhard richter's orchidee ii photopainting print of an orchid in bloom printed on top of hiroshige's kanbara winter scene, and it's a little wild how the left to right downward arc of the orchid echoes the valley and roofs in the japanese landscape, and how the leaf of the orchid echoes the tree in the print foreground. it would be wild if this is how we found out richter was using japanese woodblock print compositions as patterns for his paintings supposedly based on photographs, but here we are
Orchidee II x Kanbara yoru no yuki, as imagined in Marian Goodman’s powder room for 38 years

And while I reiterate that a Richter printed on a Hiroshige would indeed be amazing, this image is actually probably the Hiroshige Christie’s sold last week, and I assume the glitch will not survive the resumption of business on Monday.

2 Oct 2026, Lot 4: Gerhard Richter, Orchidee II, 1988, ed. 21/25, est. $25-35,000 [update: sold for $51,200] [christies]
22 May 2026, L0t 2: Gerhard Richter, Orchidee II, 1988, ed. 18/25, sold for $57,150
Previously, related: Marian’s Richter Goes Both Ways