Landschaft mit kleiner Brücke, Hubbelrath

Gerhard Richter’s “Landscape With Little Bridge, Hubbelrath” shows a landscape to the east of Düsseldorf. Between 1969 and 1971, Richter took numerous pictures in and of this region, pictures that were then incorporated into his “Atlas”, his great, ever-expanding photographic archive. Since 1962, this archive has served Richter as a kind of filter that he could insert between reality and the finished painting. “I needed the more objective photo to correct my way of seeing: for example, if I paint after nature, I begin to stylize, changing what I see in such a way as to conform to my preconceived views and my training. If I paint after a photograph, on the other hand, I can forget all the criteria inculcated by my training and I can paint, as it were, against my own will. I have always regarded this as a gain.” The compositional logic of “Landscape With Little Bridge, Hubbelrath” is determined by the horizontal line dividing the painting in two halves: Richter shows a flat, darkish landscape with an undynamic horizon and a high sky rendered with little differentiation of colour. A bridge, starting from the right-hand side of the frame and reaching almost into the middle of the painting, points to the fact that the landscape is a cultural product shaped by human hands. In the foreground and on the horizon, which gently fades into a blur, trees can be seen. A darker mass of clouds encroaches on a bright sky, quietly signalling motion. The discreet colouration appears natural and does not strain after dramatic emotional effects. Even though the painting is empty of people, it eschews the trap of the cheaply idyllic: the photographic authenticity, the inroads made by civilization (the bridge) and the banality of the motif, underlined by the picture’s title, guarantee that a reading of the painting as an example of a rural idealism is made impossible.