Public Space / Two Audiences. Works and Documents from the Herbert Collection

Coming in the Macba soon are works from the Herbert Collection.

Gerhard Richter has stated, “I am suspicious regarding the image of reality which our senses convey to us and which is incomplete and limited". The series on the Baader-Meinhoff events, October 18, 1977, for which New York MOMA paid some $15 million, depends almost entirely on a knowledge of the German history of the time; for the great many without that history, it is hard to see how those paintings will significantly communicate more than a rather vague sense of foreboding.
































The three paintings Dead 1, 2 and 3, are alternately-sized versions of the same source photo. The original image is of the dead body of Ulrike Meinhof, who hung herself in her Stammheim prison cell on Mother's Day in 1976. The original image is shocking, graphic, and gruesome; her neck having been cut through by the home-made cord she used to end her life. These images are also unique in the cycle; they represent an event that occurred more than a year before October 18, 1977.

There is and has been written loads about Richter, but quite an interesting article you can find here. And more about the exhibition of the Herbert collection in the Macba.