Everything
that could be said today is being said today, and I won’t add words, or many of them.
In
May, we were in the bookshop of the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago, and I
found Robert Storr’s September:
A History Painting by Gerhard Richter. I don’t agree with everything
Storr, the dean of the School of Art at Yale University, has to say about 9/11 in
the book -- too much of the East Coast liberal in him, and too much of the Midwest conservative in me. But I was taken with Richter’s painting. I had had a post over at High
Calling Focus earlier this year about a Richter work at the St. Louis Art
Museum, but I wasn’t aware of this work.
It’s
small, approximately 20 by 30 inches. And while it doesn’t have the clarity of
so many photographs, and the tragedy, horror and pain reflected on so many
human faces that day, for me it represents much about what happened that day,
what happened to all of us.
Painting: September by Gerhard Richter
(2005), The Museum of Modern Art, New York
7 comments:
interesting the work that richter does with photographs.
sometimes a picture, a face, a touch, or someone just showing-up can say so much more than words.
and sometimes the words we are given are the words that another person needs to hear at that time, even though it may not be apparent to the speaker.
I agree Nance -- we don't know how our words, or photos, or our actions will affect another. I do know, whenmy intent is Love, Love is all I can offer.
Hugs
Richter's is the erasing away, slowly at first and then all of a piece. Everything lost that day - clarity, a sense of purpose, confidence - is in that painting. We remain obscured for all that we failed then and fail now to see reflected in "September".
That's a really compelling rendering of the twin towers and the aftermath that still remains of that day. I looked at that painting a long time. Thanks for including it here, Glynn.
Thanks bro'...that was powerful.
That's an extremely evocative painting. Thank you.
I just couldn't watch all the media coverage of 9/11, and I surely couldn't blog about it either, so I'm with you.
The painting pulls it forward in an original way. Thanks for sharing it.
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