Week One Review

Tate Modern 

Initially I was over whelmed by the size of Gerhard Richter work in the Transformed Vision: New Image of Men exhibition at the Tate Modern. This collection of Richter's work was inspired and in reflection to American avant-garde composer John Cage, leading to the name of the collection being called Cage. As a collection the pieces seem calming and cooling due to the eclectic colour pallet of blue, green and whites. However looking at the size pieces individually they seemed to reflect different emotions and feelings. Looking at the one with a slightly more red pallet felt like it could reflect the hurry and rush of London and speeding buses. There was also another with a darker colour pallet this indivually almost seemed nightmare-ish. These are contrasting to three of the other pieces in the collection which all look much more like landscapes. Richter is said to of been painting running rivers and mist over autumnal yellow flowers, however it has also been said that he wanted to capture the texture of a concrete wall. Richter was listening to music by John Cage while he was working on this collection. Richter has been interested in Cage's ideas about ambient sound and silent. Approvingly quoted his statement 'I have nothing to say and I am saying it' (Tate Modern, 2013) I think the idea of silent is very clear in this collection and after listening to some of Cage's work I can see how Richter was inspired by his music. Richter’s work is really unusual due to his interesting painting style. He creates these pieces by layering survival applications of paint to create interesting textures looking closely at the work it is clear some of the skin of the paint has ripped as well as brush strokes, it is apparent where the paint has been scraped. Due to this as well as the large scale of the six pieces will gain the viewers attention for longer than the usual six seconds.