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A Note on Gerhard Richter's "October 18, 1977"Author(s): Benjamin H. D. BuchlohSource: October, Vol. 48 (Spring, 1989), pp. 88-109Published by: The MIT Press

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A

Note

on

Gerhard Richter's

October

8,

1977

BENJAMIN

H.

D.

BUCHLOH

Even amnesia

uffersrom

he

ompulsion

of

being

unable

to

forget;

hat

s

whatwe

call

repression.

-Juirgen

Habermas,

"Keine

Normalisierung

der

Vergangenheit"

The group of paintingsentitledOctober 8, 1977 that Gerhard Richter

completed

in

the

late

fall of 1988

immediately

onfronts ts viewers

with the

question

of the

very possibility

f

representinghistory,

oth

in

contemporary

painting

nd

in modernism

n

general.

Despite

their

apparent

continuity

with

Richter's

arly

photopaintings,I

hese

paintings

n

fact

onstitute

he first

ttempt

in

Richter's

oeuvre to address

historically pecific

public

experience.

The two

earlier

seriesof

paintings

hatone could

most

easily

dentify

s the

precedent

for

the

new

series would be the

Eight

Student

Nurses

1966)

and the 48 Portraits

(1971-72).

As

depictions

of recent murder

victims,2

n

the one

hand,

and as

presentations

f

figures

f

public history,

n the

other, however,

comparison

withthesetwogroups nstantlylarifies heirdistanceand theirdifference rom

the

paintings

October

8,

1977.

Richter's

recent decision to

represent

current

public history,

hat

s,

simultaneously

o violatethe

prohibition

gainstrepresent-

ing

historical

ubjects

n

modern

painting

nd to

break the

taboo

against

remem-

bering

this

particular pisode

of recent German

history

the

activities f the

Baader-Meinhof

Group

and the murder

of

its members

n

Stammheim

rison

distinguish

hese

paintings

from ll earlier works

by

Richter.

That this

group

of

paintings

was first xhibited

n

a

building

by

Mies van

1.

Photopainting

s the

termRichter

uses

for hat

type

f

painting-appearing

in

his oeuvre since

1962-based on the projectionof foundphotographs.

2.

Eight

tudentNurses

s

a

group

of

portraits

ased

on

newspaper

mages

of the

victims

f

the

Chicago

mass murdererRichard

Speck.




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GerhardRichter.

rison

Cell. 1988.

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i

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Gerhard

Richter.

ine-Up

(1).

1988.




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..........

rl

Line-Up

(2).

1988.




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1988.




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


A

Note on

Gerhard

Richter's

ctober

18,

1977

93

der

Rohe seems an

appropriate

historical

accident,3

or Mies is the architectwho

constructed he onlyGerman contribution o public monumental culpture n

the

twentieth

entury, evoting

t to the

memory

f the

philosopher

Rosa

Lux-

emburg

and

the

revolutionary

Karl

Liebknecht,

both of whom had been mur-

dered

by

the Berlin

police.

This coincidence establishes

continuity

etween a

bourgeois

architect

n

the Weimar state

of

the

1920s

and a

bourgeois painter

n

the

West

Germany

of the

1980s.

And indeed

both artists

differ rom

most

of

their

ontemporaries

n

their

bility

o

tolerate,

n

public

view,

challenges

to the

verypolitical

nd

economic

system

withwhich

they dentify

s

artists.

Moreover,

through

their

acts of aesthetic

commemoration,

hey

resist the

constantly

e-

newed collective

prosecution

of

those

victims

n

the form

of

their

eradication

from urrentmemory, hereby ignifyinghevictims fa statewhoseopponents

they

had

become because

of

their

public

challenge.

The first

emptation

s to

respond

to

the

shock

these

paintings

generate

with

an

art-historical

eflex,

deflecting

heir

mpact by

an

excursion

into the

history

of

historypainting.

This

is

especially

true

because two works

within

October

8,

1977

(Funeral

and

Dead

Woman)

eem

explicitly

o establish

refer-

ence

to

two

of

the

central

mages

from

he

complex prehistory

f the

destruction

of

history ainting

n

the nineteenth

entury.4

But the

history

f

history

ainting

s

itself

history

f the

withdrawal

f

a

subject

from

painting's bility

o

represent,

withdrawal

hat

ultimately ener-ated themodernistnotionofaesthetic

utonomy.

n this

development,

orms f

traditional

representation

were divided

into,

on

the one

hand,

a referential

function ased on resemblance

a

function hat

photography

would

increasingly

and more

convincingly

ssume

beginning

n

the

mid-nineteenth

entury)

nd,

on

the

other,

the

complementary

ormation,

hat

of

a

liberation f

painterly

means,

whose

lasting

nd

only triumph

was

to become

the

systematic

egation

of the

functions

f

representation.

n

their

efusal

ither o

give

up

painting

or

photog-

raphy

out

ourt r

to

accept

the

supposed ucidity

f

photography's

ocused

gaze,

Richter's

photopaintings

ave

consistently

pposed

the

universal

resence

of

that

gaze

and its

ubiquitous

instrumentalization f

the look. This

has

particular

importance

within he

group

October

8,

1977 in relationto a

gaze

that,

n the

police-commissioned ress photographs

hat served Richter

s a

point

of

depar-

ture,

eems

ritualistically

o assure

itself

f

the final

iquidation

of the

enemies of

the state. But at

the

same time this

group

resists he

modernist

restriction

f

painting

to a mediation of

historical

experience

exclusively

n

the

discursive

3.

Oktober

8,

1977

was

first hown

at the

Museum

Haus

Esters, Krefeld;

see

the

catalogue

Gerhard Richter/8.

Oktober

977,

Cologne,

Verlag

der

Buchhandlung

Walther

K6nig,

1988,

in

which the

present

text

originally ppeared

together

with

essays by

Stefan

Germer and

Gerhard

Storck.

4.

The formerhas

inevitable

ssociations

withCourbet's

Burial

at

Ornans

1849-50),

the

latter

with Manet's Dead Toreador

1864).




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


.

/

...

Gerhard

Richter.

ead Woman

(1).

1988.




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.....

..

..

Dead

Woman

(2).

1988.




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


V ONV

*

,MUM

Mil

Dead

Woman

(3).

1988.




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


A

Note

on Gerhard

Richter's ctober

18,

1977

97

reflection

n

the

evolution,

the

materials,

nd

the

procedures

of the

pictorial

medium itself. t is in the construction f thisdilemma,markedby both the

conflict

n

medium-painting/photography-and

the

conflict

n

ideas about

representability

the

painting's

self-referenciality/photography's

transpar-

ency"

to the

event-that

Richter'sworktestifies

o the

contemporary

ifficulties

in

the

production

of historical

epresentation

n

painting.

The

inability

f

painting

o

represent

ontemporary istory

esultedfirst f

all

from he

transformation

f historical

xperience

nto an

experience

of

collec-

tive

catastrophe.

t therefore

eemed

that

onlyphotography,

n

its

putative

ccess

to

facticity

nd

objectivity,

ould

qualify

s an

instrument

f

historical

epresen-

tation.

econdly,

nsofar

s

catastrophe

emocratizes

historical

xperience,

t

also

destroys he artistic laim to a privilegedmode of seeingand of historicalnter-

pretation.

This has become most evident

n

the work of

Andy

Warhol,

n

which

the

long

and

complicated

process

of

the

democratic

experience

of

catastrophe

and

the

mechanical

representation

f

death are

integrated.

n

his

work,

heroes

and victims

re

equally

the

objects

of

photographic

representation;

heir

only

difference ies

in

the distinction

between "famous

deaths

and

anonymous

deaths." The

nearly

unbearable

cruelty

f

the

photographic

detail

in

Warhol's

paintings

Warhol

selected

archival

photos

of

accidents which

had even

been

rejected

s

unpublishable y

the

tabloids),

goes

hand in

hand

with

he aconic and

affectless

xecution of the

representation.

he

de-differentiationf the

artistic

processcorresponds o thearbitrary atalitynd theutterdesublimation f the

experience

of

death.

Since the

mid-1I960s

Richter

has

been

engaged

in

a

dialogue

with

Warhol's

painting,

dialogue

in

which

the

differences ave

been

occasionally

bscured

by

an

emphasis

on

the

parallels

between

their

points

of

departure.

The

construction

of an

"iconography

f death"

by

art

historians

oncerned with

this

period-an

"iconography"

that

supposedly

inks he work of

the two artists

has

especially

failedto

clarify

ow

Richter's

48

Portraits

hould be

distinguished

rom

Warhol's

13

Most-Wanted

en

(1964).

Nor is

this

onstruction

ble

to

address

the

manner

in

whichthe

new

series,

October

8, 1977,

redeems this

dialogue

with he

1960s,

especially

the

implied

annihilation n Warhol's work of the last

possibility

f

constructing

istorical

memory

hrough

the

means of

painting.

In

distinct ontrast o

Warhol's

work,

the

victims n

Richter's

recent

paint-

ings

are

not the victims f

anonymous

ccidents,

but

are

agents

within

histori-

cally pecific

moment.

n

further

ontrast o

Warhol's,

Richter's

paintings

o

not

affirm ollective

amnesia of

the

experience

of

death;

rather

they

attempt

to

construct

pictorial

representation

f

the

act

of

recalling

and

understanding

personal experience

n

its

relation

to

history.

n

this

respect

Richter's

paintings

constitute

European

inversionof

Warhol's

position

of

anomy

with

regard

to

history.

nasmuch

as

they mphasize

the

individual's

apacity

o

act

(both

thatof

the individuals

depicted

and that of the individual

depicting,

he

painter),

they

insist on

this

capacity

as

a

necessary

condition

of

contemporary

artistic




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.....

.

GerhardRichter.

Man,

Shot

(1).

1988.




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.

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.

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1988.




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


100

OCTOBER

production.

In

that

respect

October

8,

1977

resembles the

representation

f

Stephen Biko, the South Africanrevolutionary,n Hans Haacke's workVoici

Alcan

(1983),

a

relationship

which

Richter's

painting

generally

would

not have

called

to mind.

If

Richter's

October

8,

1977

works

reflect

he difficulties

f

painting

to

engage

now in

the

representation

f

contemporaryhistory,

heir

very

unex-

pected

commitment

o historical

ubject

matter also

comments

mplicitly

n

other

contemporary ractices

of

history ainting

n

Germany.Clearly

Richter's

struggle

with

he

issue of

historical

epresentation

egins

n his

assumption

hat

the

historicaldimension of

painting

s

primarily

he discursive

history

f

the

medium.

By

contrast,

ecent German

history ainting,

he

type

of

"polit-kitsch"

produced bya newgeneration f Germanartists, as no suchstruggle o contend

with,

ince

it

appears

to insist hat the

negation

of

historical

epresentation

n

twentieth-century

ainting

was

at

best

a

brief

nterlude,

failure hat has to

be

redressed-

as

though

such

artists

s

Mondrian

and Newman had

voluntarily

deprived

themselves

f the

capacity

to

represent

he

"historical."5

5.

"It seems that the

one

attitude

tarts

rom

he

assumption

hat the

work of

distanciation

nd

comprehensionopens up

a

space

for commemoration

nd

the

autonomous confrontation

with

ambivalenthistorical

egacies,

whilethe other attitudewould like to

employ

revisionist

istory

n

order

to

revamp

ts

concept

of

traditional

dentity

or

the

sake of

reconstituting

national

history"

(JOrgen

Habermas,

"Apologetische

Tendenzen,"

in

Eine Art

Schadensabwicklung,

rankfurt/Main,

Suhrkamp,

1987,

p.

133).

Anselm Kiefer s

only

the most

prominent

f

the

German artists

who have

modeled themselves

n

concepts

that

Habermas

has

defined

s

"traditional

dentity."

n

the

course

of their restoration

f

these

concepts,

these artistshave

produced

a

type

of work-now

widely

disseminated

nd

producing

ts

own kind

of

fall-out

n

North America as well-that

can best

be

identified

s

polit-kitsch.

ts

attraction eems not

only

to be its

reconstitution

f traditional

dentity

for

the

generation

f

West

Germans

who wish

o

abandon

the

long

and difficult

rocess

of

reflection

upon

a

post-traditional

dentity.

he attraction

f

polit-kitsch

lso

appears

to

be-and

herein ies ts

international

ppeal-its

reconstitution

f

the

artistic

rivilege

ssociated withthe

traditional den-

tity,

.e.,

the claim

to have

privileged

ccess to

"seeing"

and

"representing"

history.

During

the

planning tages

of

the recent Anselm Kiefer

retrospective-the

largest

nd

most

important ommitment, ver, to a postwarEuropean artistby the fourmajor American museums

involved-one of

the curators

gave

me an

unforgettable

nswer to a naive

question. Having

asked

whether,

s

an

art

historian,

e

did not first

eel

the

need

to exhibit he

work of

a

major

artist

f

the

'60s

generation-an

artist

uch as Gerhard Richter-before

according

uch

an

enormous

retrospec-

tive to

a

relativelyyoung

artist

of

the

current

generation,

he

said

briskly,

Kiefer

is

sexier than

Richter."

The

quip

has

stayed

with

me

for

several reasons.

First,

t

constituted

my

nitial ncounter

with the

language

of

the

new

managerial

type

of

curator,

type

that

has

increasingly eplaced

the

traditional

curator,

who

perceived

him- or

herself

essentially

s

a

scholar

in

the

service

of an

institution

f

the

public sphere.

Condensed

as

this

casual remark

may

have

been,

it nevertheless

indicated that the

managerial

curator

would conceive exhibitions

n

the model

of

the

advertising

campaign

and

seasonally

determined

product

nnovation.

Second,

the

quip suggested

o

me that

xpectations

or

nd

responses

o

certain

ontemporary

art

production

xceeded even

the most

pessimistic

redictions

or

the future

f

high

culture

by,

for

example,thesituationists.he particular usionand confusion) fseparatemodesofexperiencethat

the curatorial

uip performed

roved

thatthe

social

tendency

hat

forces he work

of

art to function

as

a mere fetish

f

sign exchange-value

had

already

been

fully ccepted

as

a

commonplace.




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...

.

4

..............

ef

ii

GerhardRichter.

Woman,

Hanged.

1988.




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4e

...

.4

Gerhard

Richter.

ecord

Player.

1988.




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A

Note

on Gerhard

Richter's ctober

18,

1977 103

Richterhas

articulatedhis

explicit

resistance

o this

ype

of

historical

rave-

robbery, specially n the last sixyears,byrecuperatinghistoricallynaccessible

pictorial

ypes

uch as the still-life-as-memento

ori,

o which

his Skulls nd Candle

paintings

efer.This

recuperation,

owever,

cts

explicitly

s a resistance ofalse

immediacy

and to the

claim

that

the irreversible

oss of

these

categories

of

painterly

ommemoration

ould

be redeemed. What

is

convincing

n

Richter's

Skulls

and Candle

paintings

s their character

as

grotesques:

they brilliantly

perform

he

purely

echnical

vailability

f

these

pictorial

ypes

while

t

the

same

time

they

publicly

nvalidate

ny

actual

experience

once

conveyed by

this

genre.

But

since the

paintings

October

8,1977

are as different romthis mode

of

the

grotesque

as

they

re

from he

early

photopaintings

o

which t first

lance they

seem to return,t seemsall themore difficulto clarifyheir ttitude owardthe

historical

ubject.

Unlike most

contemporary

German

painting,

which

simply

ignores

the

fact that

the

prohibition

of

representation

tself has become an

irreversible

istorical

eality

hat

can

only

be

ignored

at the

price

of

mythicizing

painting,

Richter's

nonetheless nsists

n

transcending

hat

rreversible istorical

fact

with

the

very

means of

painting.

But

if

painting's

own recent

history

aises barriers o

the

accessibility

f a

language

with

whichto

represent

historical

nd

political

fact,

he

historical ield

itself

s riddled with

nstances

of

amnesia about

specific

vents,

making

t

clear

that

history's

wn

accessibility

o itself

s

at issue. "Polit-kitsch"

painting

s as

unconcernedwiththis second issue as it is withthe

first,

aving

settled ntothe

comfort

of a

repetitively

nacted,

gratuitous

ritual of

engaging

with

history

without ven

addressing

the concrete nstances

f

actual recent

repression.

Richter's shift

from the

current fashion within

German

painting-

the

fashion

for

pointing

to the

history

of fascism-

to

an

attempt

to recall

the

seemingly

naccessiblemomentof

extra-parliamentarypposition

nd

its terror-

ist

consequences

n the

history

f

the

Baader-Meinhof

Group

and

the Red

Army

Faction

thereby

also

implies

a

criticism

f

the

irresponsible

dabbling

in

the

history

f

German fascismwith

the

meagre

means

of

generally

ncompetent

painting.At thesame time, t s also an attempt o reflect pon theactual power

of

contemporary

epression

and,

through

Richter's own

pictorial

means,

to

transform his

power

of

repression

nto

the

question

of its

very

representability.

The extent

to which the

Baader-Meinhof

Group

has in

fact

become the

object

of

collective

repression

or

the

object

of

internalized tate

censorship)

s

reflected

n

the fact hat

only

rarely-as

in

the case

of

Joseph

Beuys's

spontane-

ous

declamation

"Diirer,

will

personally

uide

Baader and

Meinhof

hrough

ocu-

menta

V"

(1972)

and

Alexander

Kluge's

cooperative

film

project Germany

n

Autumn

1977-78)-has

an

artistic

project

addressed

this

particular subject.

The

film

ntroduction

o Arnold

Schonberg's ccompaniment

o a

Cinemaographic

Scene 1972), byJean-MarieStrauband Danible Huillet,was banned fromGer-

man

television ecause it was

dedicated to

the

memory

f

Holger

Meins,

young

film

irectorwho

had

participated

n the

activities

f the

Baader-Meinhof

Group




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............................

........................

low,

Gerhard

Richter.

outh

Portrait.1988.




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


A

Note

on Gerhard

Richter's

ctober

18,

1977

105

and

became

one of the victims

of the events

at

Stammheim Prison

(events

surrounding hedeathsofthefivemembers fthegroup,whichwerepresented

as a collective

uicide,

but were

suspected

of

having

been, instead,

state-ordered

police

assassination).

In

order to recall the

collective

nability

f West

Germans to reflect

pon

the

history

f

the most radical

challenge

to

their

postwar

conomic

and

political

order,

we should

compare

it to the

way

the Italian

government

ucceeded

in

treating

n

incomparably

arger,

more

efficiently

rganized

anarchistic

pposi-

tion movement t the same

time.The

astonishment

f

the German

reader

at

this

comparison

perhaps

also

that

reader's

secret

shudder at

the

contemplation

f

Italian

liberality

n

the

treatment

f

the

enemies

of

the

state)

becomes

apparentin a

recently ublished

essay by

the GermanhistorianArnulf

Baring:

One

consequence

was

the

enormous movement f

left-wing

errorism

haunting

Italy

in the

1970s.

.

.

. One

almost

spoke

of

an

armed

party.

The

number

of

arrests

urpassed

several

thousands. State-of-

emergency

aws were

introduced,

and

one

of

the most

important

politicians

f

Italy,

Aldo

Moro,

was

kidnapped

and

murdered.

t

is

all

the

more

remarkable o see

to what

extent

the

Italian

stateremained

willing

to

communicate and

negotiate:

after

only

a

few

years

the

conflict hat had

approached

civil

war

was

successfully

efused and

finally esolved. According o Bolaffi t was the intervention f the

Catholic

church

n

particular

hat

llowed

for

reconciliation

within

brief

period

of

time. The

sentences

of

those

convicted

were

reduced,

their

living

conditions

n

the

prisons

were

improved,

and

many

of

them were

granted

early

release.

In

comparison

t seems

that

throughout

he

1970s the

German

state

was

unable

to afford uch

a

degree

of

tolerance.

Even

at

the end

of

the

1980s

its

citizens

seem to

have

difficulty

eveloping

even

the

mnemonic

basis for

reconciliation.

The

intended

effectof

the

elimination of

this

group,

however,

was

clearly

accomplished:not onlyhas theirhistory ecome theobject ofcollectiverepres-

sion, but,

at

the same

time,

he

project

of

an

extra-parliamentary

pposition

nd

the

active

presence

of

a

radical,

interventionist

ritique

of

the

social

order

(euphemistically

alled the

society

of

consumption)

has

been

eradicated.

Richter's

October

8,

1977

attempts

o

initiate

reflective

ommemoration

of

these

individuals,

whose

supposed

crimes

remained

to a

large

degree

unpro-

ven

(despite

years

of

pretrial

nvestigation,

which

never

even

resulted in

an

indictment),

s

was

that

crime

(never

even

investigated)

whose

victims

they

became.

These

paintings

ontradict

he

present

historical

moment,

which

pro-

hibits

eflection n

the

activities f

one of

the

most

mportant

eft-wingournal-

ists nd pacifistsfpostwarGermany,UlrikeMeinhof, young iterary istorian,

Gudrun

Ensslin,

nd a

young

film

director,

Holger

Meins.




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Gerhard

Richter. rrest

1).

1988.




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2).

1988.




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GerhardRichter.

uneral.

1988.




7/23/2019 778953 (1)


A Note

on

GerhardRichter's ctober

18,

1977

109

In their

ngagement

with historical

ubject

the

new

paintings

re no more

desperatethan are Richter's bstractpaintingsn theirengagementwith hevery

possibility

f

painting.

Since,

therefore,

oth

series are focused on the crisisof

contemporary

ainting,

hat crisis

s

reflected

upon

along

its various axes:

pro-

duction

no less

than

reception.

In his

explicit

refusal to break the

group

of

paintings

October

8,

1977 into

ndividual

objects

or

to

have

them enter nto the

usual

channels of market

distribution,

Richter

contests,

even

if in

a

singular

construction

f

an

exceptional

situation,

he currentmodes

of

consumption

s

the

exclusive

formof

responding

to artistic

ractice.

Documents

778953 (1)