ABSTRACT Title of Document: Illusion and Disillusionment in the Works of Jeff Wall and Gerhard Richter: Picturing (Post)Modern Life Virginia Adams, Ph. 2007 Directed By: Professor Steven A. Mansbach, Department of Art History and Archaeology This study is a meta-critique of the discourse surrounding the emergence of large-scale, color photography around 1980 and the concurrent “return to painting” through an examination of the art praxes of Jeff Wall and Gerhard Richter. As Western avant-garde art shifted from conceptual practices toward large-scale, figurative painting and photography during the late 1970s and early 1980s, there developed a vociferous discourse that, to a large degree, was highly critical of the changes that were taking place.
The most strident aspect of the discourse emanated from fundamentally Marxist critics and academicians who viewed the turn to more aesthetically-based art forms as an undesirable capitulation to the political hegemony of the conservative administration in the United States, and to a burgeoning and increasingly international art market fueled by improving economic conditions. This criticism looked less than carefully at the art and the stated positions of the artists. This study mines the critical writings about both Wall and Richter in order to illuminate the discourse and elucidate the limits of art-historical writing that arises from rigid theoretical positions. It focuses particularly on the writings of Benjamin Buchloh, Douglas Crimp, Rosalind Krauss and Jean-François Chevrier.
The writings of Wall and Richter are also given considerable weight and their voices are invoked as full participants. The works of Wall and Richter involve inextricable combinations of photography and painting in very different ways, and the role of medium within the discourse is examined. In addition, the artists’ references in their works to art forms of earlier periods in the history of Modernism are also considered. Although this study focuses on the period 1976 to 1990, it pays considerable attention to connections between early twentieth century German and Russian theories of montage and the art of Jeff Wall, and Wall’s illuminated transparencies are emphasized.
The geographic scope of the study includes North America and West Germany, where much of the controversy about the “return to painting” was generated, and where exhibitions of the work of both Wall and Richter occurred frequently during the study period. ILLUSION AND DISILLUSIONMENT IN THE WORKS OF JEFF WALL AND GERHARD RICHTER: PICTURING (POST)MODERN LIFE By VIRGINIA ADAMS Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee: Professor Steven A. Mansbach, Chair Professor Saverio Giovacchini Andy Grundberg Professor William Pressly Professor Joshua A. Shannon © Copyright by Virginia Adams 2007 DEDICATION To Neal and Robin ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The help and encouragement of many people stand behind this dissertation.
My professors in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland provided inspiration and encouragement during my odyssey through art history that followed my career as a corporate lawyer. In particular, I thank Steven A. Mansbach, my dissertation advisor, whose brilliance permeated our discussions of my proposal through defense of the dissertation. I will always be grateful for Steven’s pointedly specific suggestions that emanated from his deep knowledge and understanding of art of the twentieth century, as well as for his perspective on this rather remarkable academic process.
I also wish to thank members of my defense committee, William Pressly, Joshua Shannon, Andy Grundberg and Saverio Giovacchini, for the time that they gave to reading the dissertation and for their very engaged participation and insightful suggestions and questions during the defense. They made the defense not only challenging, but enjoyable. Wendy Grossman and Martha Bari, fellow graduate students who finished before me, provided invaluable friendship, perspective on the process, and opportunities to vent frustration and laugh about writing a dissertation. I look forward to our continued friendship and collaboration.
It goes without saying that I am most grateful to my husband, Neal Friedlander, and our daughter, Robin Friedlander, who understood my desire to study art history in the depth that pursuing this degree has required, and who generously, if somewhat bemusedly, accepted the time that it has taken. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .1 Chapter 1: The Big Picture .13 The Return to Painting .24 The Postmodern Picture.25 The Tableau—an Earlier History.31 The Contemporary Picture as Tableau.35 Jeff Wall’s Pictures .45 Gerhard Richter’s Pictures.52 What Is a Picture? .53 Chapter 2: What’s a Pure Medium?.56 What Is a Medium?.60 The Postmodern Medium.65 Another View of Medium: Rosalind Krauss .67 Krauss Rewrites Clement Greenberg’s Concept of Medium .81 Jeff Wall’s Medium .88 Wall’s Medium Critiqued .95 Rosalind Krauss on Jeff Wall .101 Gerhard Richter’s Photopaintings.106 Critical Response to Richter’s Photopaintings .109 Commentary on Benjamin Buchloh.119 Is There a Pure Medium?.131 Chapter 3: Disillusionment: The Disruption of Scopic Pleasure in Jeff Wall’s Pictures .133 Gestus and Gesture: The Legacy of Brecht and Benjamin. 139 Borders and Wires.157 The Radical Oblique and the Abject Subject.162 Dirt and Washing .188 Transparency and Opacity in Gerhard Richter’s Scopic Disruptions.189 iv Summary Statement .196 v LIST OF FIGURES Chapter One: Fig. Louise Lawler, Why Pictures Now.
Black and white photograph. Gerhard Richter, Table. Oil on canvas. Gerhard Richter, Ema (Nude on a Staircase).
Oil on canvas. Gerhard Richter, Bridge (By the Sea). Oil on canvas. Gerhard Richter, Two Candles.
Oil on canvas. Gerhard Richter, Marian. Oil on canvas. Gerhard Richter, Annunciation after Titian.
Oil on canvas. Chapter Two: Fig. Jeff Wall, Restoration. Transparency in lightbox.
Gerhard Richter, Court Chapel, Dresden. Oil on canvas. Chapter Three: Fig. Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Mimic. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Outburst.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, A Villager from Aricakoyu Arriving in Mahmutbey—Istanbul, September, 1997. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Steves Farm, Steveston.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Bad Goods. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Diatribe.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, The Storyteller. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Diagonal Composition.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Diagonal Composition no. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Diagonal Composition no.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Peas and Sauce. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Rainfilled Suitcase.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Man in Street. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Just Washed.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Bloodstained Garment. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, A Wall in a Former Bakery.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Some Beans. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, An Octopus.
Transparency in lightbox. Black and white photograph. Black and white photograph. Black and white photograph.
Black and white photograph. Jeff Wall, Swept. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Housekeeping.
Silver gelatin print. Jeff Wall, Volunteer. Silver gelatin print. Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Blind Window no. Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Blind Window no.
Transparency in lightbox. Jeff Wall, Blind Window no. Gerhard Richter, Lovers in the Forest. Oil on canvas.
Jeff Wall, Forest. Silver gelatin print. Gerhard Richter, Curtain III (bright). Oil on canvas.
Gerhard Richter, Shadow Painting. Oil on canvas. Gerhard Richter, Four Panes of Glass. Glass and enameled steel.
Each pane 190 x 100 cm. Gerhard Richter, Gray Mirror. Oil on canvas, four panels. Each panel 300 x 100 cm.
Gerhard Richter, Eight Gray. Gray enameled glass and steel. Each panel 500 x 270 x 50 cm. Gerhard Richter, detail from 128 Details from a Picture.
Black and white photograph. viii DISCLAIMER The dissertation document that follows has had referenced material removed in respect for the owner’s copyright A complete version of this document, which includes said referenced material, resides in the University of Maryland, College Park’s library collection. ix ILLUSION AND DISILLUSIONMENT IN THE WORKS OF JEFF WALL AND GERHARD RICHTER: PICTURING (POST)MODERN LIFE Introduction This study is a theoretical analysis of the discourse surrounding the emergence of large-scale, color photography during the late 1970s, as the prevalence of photographically-based Conceptual Art began to wane. The study focuses on the years 1976 to 1990, with 1980 as the pivotal year in the shift away from Conceptual Art that had prevailed from the mid-1960s during the peak of Minimalism and Pop Art and extended through the late 1970s.
The conceptual art movement had valorized work that was typically photographic, utilizing black-and-white, deskilled snapshots frequently combined with text to create art that was not just unaesthetic, but anti- aesthetic. A major goal of Conceptual Art had been to thwart the institution of the museum, the art market and what had come to be termed the “culture industry.” The shift was toward art that was narrative, pictorial, large-scale, and in color. The emergence of the new photographic form occurred in concert with a resurgence of large-scale painting. This study places primary emphasis on the critical and art- historical writings of the period, while paying close attention to the art and writings of Jeff Wall and Gerhard Richter, artists who played key roles in the described shifts.
A plethora of essays chronicled the changes that art historians and curators were observing, and comprised the discourse of the period. Those who evaluated art from a fundamentally Marxist perspective, primarily in reliance upon the writings of Walter Benjamin and other theorists of the first decades of the twentieth century, abjured what appeared to them to be a tidal wave of art that seemed specifically 1 designed for the gallery, the museum and the market. They expressed disdain for conservative developments in the American political regime and changes in the economy as they affected art production and consumption. Other writers, of course, celebrated the resurgence of painting evidenced in numerous exhibitions of West German and American Neoexpressionism and the Italian Transavantgarde.
Methodology The methodology of the study is the creation of a meta-critique through an examination of the key theoretical arguments propounded during the period as they developed, and, particularly, as they were applied to the art production of two artists whose works emblematize the issues at stake. The artists are Jeff Wall, a Canadian photographer whose photographic transparencies derive significant inspiration from historic painting and cinema, and Gerhard Richter, a German painter whose work integrally involves photography. A major purpose of the study is to illuminate the limitations of the criticisms of the resurgence of figurative and pictorial art, which tended to approach it from preconceived theoretical positions, and to gloss over the critical stances that the artists themselves voiced in writings and interviews. Moreover, it is argued that the Marxist historians failed to look seriously at Wall’s art, in particular, thus underestimating its conversance with some of the theoretical positions that the critics themselves espoused.
In examining the theoretical discourse of the period, this study historicizes the works of Wall and Richter by placing them in the context of the moment of 1980. Yet, it is emphatically the case that the discourse engages earlier historical periods to which their work directly relates. For example, Jeff Wall’s transparencies of the early 2 1980s reconstruct, or re-present, some well-known nineteenth-century French paintings made on the cusp of Modernism, and some of his later transparencies appropriate ideas that arose within photography during the early twentieth century. As a painter who incorporates photography integrally within his praxis, Richter also has produced a hybrid art that has addressed art forms that range from the readymade, to Pop Art, to history and landscape painting, to Abstract Expressionism.
Thus, his painting incorporates art-historical as well as photographic models. As a consequence of the complex kinds of works that both Wall and Richter produce, the immediate focus on the critical writing of the period of the study necessarily requires consideration of earlier periods. It pays close attention, however, to the interweaving of the art and the writings of the artists themselves, in order to reveal the strengths and limits of theoretical approaches that eschew full engagement with the art and related writings, and therefore tend to dismiss them. Given the intellectual orientations of the two artists, their voices are fully integrated into the study.