Unconsolable Contemporary: Observing Gerhard Richter

177 Pages·2017·5.46 MB·English

by  Paul Rabinow

Unconsolable Contemporary
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Observing Gerhard Richter | Paul Rabinow
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Duke University Press Durham and London 2017
© 2017 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ♾
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Minion and Meta by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Rabinow, Paul, author.
Title: Unconsolable contemporary : observing Gerhard Richter /
Paul Rabinow.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035991 (print) | LCCN 2017040729 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780822372271 (ebook) | ISBN 9780822369967 (hardcover : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780822370017 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Richter, Gerhard, 1932—Criticism and interpretation. |
Philosophical anthropology. | Art and philosophy.
Classification: LCC ND588.R48 (ebook)
LCC ND588.R48 R335 2017 (print) DDC 709.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035991
Cover art: Gerhard Richter at work. Photograph by Benjamin Katz.
Courtesy of Benjamin Katz and the Gerhard Richter Archive.
To Anthony Stavrianakis
For with friends men are better able both to think and to do.
It is those who wish the good for their friends for their
friends’ sake who are friends most truly.
—ARIStotLe, Nicomachean Ethics (1155b, 16–17; 1156b, 8–10)
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CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
Form and Birkenau
15 CHAPTER 1
Object: The Contemporary
33 CHAPTER 2
Constellations: Writing and Imaging Strife
65 CHAPTER 3
Assembling: Abet and Facilitate
95 CHAPTER 4
Composition: Technē and Pathos
125 CHAPTER 5
Contemporary Consolations: Unconsoled
141 CHAPTER 6
Restive Endings
Notes 147 BiBliography 159
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INTRODUCTION Form and Birkenau
One readily believes that a culture is more attached to its values
than to its forms; that the latter can be easily modified, aban-
doned, reworked; that it is only meaning that is deeply rooted.
This would be to misunderstand how much forms, when they
come apart or when they are born, can provoke astonishment
or hate; it is to misunderstand that people hold dearly to their
ways of seeing, of saying, of doing and of thinking, more than
what one sees, says and does. The battle of forms in the West
has been hard fought, if not more than that of ideas and values.
This battle has taken a singular shape in the twentieth century:
it is “the formal” itself, it is the reflective work on the system of
forms that has become the stakes of the battle. Form has become
a remarkable object of moral hostilities, aesthetic debates and
political confrontations.
—Michel Foucault
The core intent of this work is to invent, test, and practice one form of the
interplay of inquiry and narration. During the course of the narrative, the
reader will encounter a series of observations principally (but not uniquely)
concerning the German artist Gerhard Richter. As I am neither an art histo-
rian nor an art critic nor a cultural studies specialist, my contribution is best
characterized as an amateur one, albeit an anthropological one. For a range
of reasons that I will explore as this work unfolds, I have been “taken” by
Gerhard Richter, his artistic production, and the assemblage of critics asso-