| Research Abstract |
About Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings (paintings from photos) in the 1960s, mainly because of Richter's sayings, many researchers couldn't point out their political or historical meanings without some hesitation. But after the fundamental research by Misterek-Plagge (1990/1992), and more recently, as Dietmar Elger and Dietmar Rubel have discussed (2007), various meanings of Richter's photo-paintings have been indicated.
The first result of this research is to have been found about 70 magazine photos of approximately 160 photos Richter had clipped out, through re-researching German weekly magazines like Stern, Quick, Bunte, Revue, Neue(Revue und Neue were united in 1966) from 1962 to 1966 as Misterek-Plagge did, and furthermore, also researching Spiegel and all magazines in 1959, 1967 and more. And the historical, more accurately, ‘tragic' meanings of Richter's photo-paintings were revealed more persuasively than the limited results of Misterek-Plagge and Elger.
The second result is to be pointed out there is a meaning's consistency from the photo-paintings in the 1960s, through "18.October, 1977"(1988), to "Black, Red, Gold"(1998) for the Reichstag in Berlin. The work "Black, Red, Gold"(1998), which is not an oil painting but a colored glass work, is to be seen as some abstract painting superficially, but it is well known that Richter had an another plan as something like his photo-paintings in the 1960s, based on the photos of Holocaust. So, in the trials of Richter, we can recognize a consistency from the 1960s to 1990s. Thus, through re-arranging Richter's works from the 1960s, the political, historical and ‘tragic' meanings were described as a consistent issue throughout his famous works, which had been indicated just individually, just about his individual works. That is this research's significant result.
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