Daniel Richter:
The Morning After
David Zwirner Gallery
525 West 19th Street
between 10th and 11th Avenues
212-727-2070
May 10 to June 19,
2004
By Stephen
Mueller
Daniel Richter Tuwenig
2004
oil on canvas, 82-1/2 x 102-3/4 inches
Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery
This is Daniel Richter's first show in New York. In Germany and elsewhere
in Europe he is a big deal and much, very much, has been written and
said about this provocative work. It seems Richter was an abstract painter
for a short while and has recently taken to making politically charged
figurative paintings of urban confusion, ritual and violence. These
are very large-format paintings done in an apocalyptic-illustrational
style. Well versed in the conventions of nineteenth century history
painting, from France to Russia, Richter uses this format to capture
enigmatic moments in seemingly staged or ritual events of violence and
confusion.
In "Tuwenig" a
cabaret-style performer (boots, top hat, bare legs) entertains a pack
of glaring wolf-dogs in a sylvan setting at night. In "Tefzen"
a showgirlish befeathered circus performer poses-appliance model style-in
the midst of what appears to have been a gladiatorial battle of the
animals; the victors are still snarling, and the vanquished are rigid
in defeat and death. This is theater of the absurd spectacle: cruel,
sometimes solemn, and delivered with "what you see is what you
get" bluntness, conveyed in a panoply of painterly technique and
reference, from the deliberately awkward to the skillfully rendered.
Daniel Richter Tefzen
2004
oil on canvas, 141-3/4 x 102-1/4 inches
Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery
The variety of paint applications
is dazzling. Color ranges from psychedelic to fecal. The combination
of elements in the paintings sometimes verges on the hokey. The political
stance is never quite clear and Richter's anarchistic response to query
is fairly opaque. He's determined to be socially engaged as well as
a painter. This is fine, at least until the illustrators at Rolling
Stone catch up to his madness.
The sources of these works
range from famous news photos and sundry magazine clippings to children's
books. There is a feeling of familiarity about all the paintings even
though the goings on are outrageous and sometimes deeply funny. There
is a sense of inevitability in the proceedings, as if it has been enacted
before and likely will again. This theatricality may be saying more
about the cyclical nature of history than it wants to. For now the paintings
pass as art and wicked entertainment.
