Sunday, January 31, 2016

Power, Corruption & Lies




(Gerhard Richter)


Nothing much to report today. I am itching to spend money online. Don't know why, just am; boredom, I guess. I began an ambitious apartment cleaning effort last weekend, but don't feel like seeing it through to completion now. That is the way of things. There is only effort without end. My new mantra will be: do not do, just be. Women will simply love me.

I plan to go into the city today with my buddy from Japan. The three sisters are arriving later, though my official plans with them do not begin until tomorrow. We will go to a museum, the SF Moma. It has been some time since I have been, since the boy was in a stroller and I was a married man, happy as a house.

I used to see exhibits in SF that had been in NYC as well, and I always preferred the curatorial arrangements in NY over SF. Gerhard Richter being one that stood out, how poorly it was curated in SF.

It is difficult to find much good writing about Richter. His work defies the easy categorization that other artists almost seem to strive towards. What glee some artists must feel when a favorable label is finally applied.



Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that precludes the emergence of any single meaning and view. 

- Richter




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