4900 Colours: Version II at the Serpentine

4900 Colours: Version II at the Serpentine

24 September, 2008
by: SUSIE

Two kinds of PV happened at the Serpentine Gallery on 22 September (I was going to begin by labelling the first as PVA, but we'd just end up in a sticky mess...). They were the Press View and the Private View. The distinguishing factors are that the latter had free wine and that I was not invited to it.*

So, it's 11am and I am thrilled to find myself sitting right in front of one of the greatest painters living and working today - Gerhard Richter. Since the 1960s, the Dresden-born German artist has taken painting as his subject. Famed for his ethereal photo-paintings and monumental abstracts, he always retains an emotional distance from his work, staunchly rejecting definitions and autobiography.

Richter's use of coloured glass squares began with the 2007 commission for Cologne Cathedral's south transept window. It was developed in 4900 Colours, which comprises 196 panels which can be reconfigured in eleven variations. Version II, a continuation of that project, has been created specially for the Serpentine Gallery. It is the element of flexibility and flux that Richter deems so in keeping with the current age.

The show consists of 49 square panels, each containing smaller coloured squares of identical size, arranged at random. For a romantic, the result is left to chance. In the cool, disconnected realm of Richter, it makes more sense that it is, in fact, a random selection generated by a specially designed computer programme.

Richter says he will not be exploring the coloured glass squares any further; that there is no reason to. In comparison to the beautiful cathedral window, I'm not sure what these repetitive panels have to add. They certainly lack the transcendent beauty of the stained glass, set amid gothic tracery, defiant in its colourful reconstruction after World War II damage.

Gerhard Richter's vivacious Abstract Paintings hint at meaning, even if it constantly eludes our understanding. At first, 4900 Colours: Version II seems to pose few questions. That is, until you see these as the logical development of the artist's use of abstraction to rid his work of all subject. Then it gets interesting.

When pressed on concepts and explanations, Richter, rather charmingly, says he cannot attempt to put it any better than the three essays published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue. That's as close to an answer as we're going to get. Despite a passing resemblance to the tiles above my kitchen sink, this is not easy work and these, indeed fascinating, essays bring up a wealth of theory regarding colour, semiotics, chance, reproduction, conceptualism etc.

Richter's squares are in league with their gridded accomplices: sudokus. Ponder them for hours, strive for completion until finally, the moment arrives but glory is vacuous. You realise you've been asking the wrong questions all along and you don't understand anything at all. It is this uncertainty that the artist thrives upon.

Richter's six Cage paintings (2006), on display at Tate Modern, are an homage to Lecture On Nothing by John Cage, who claimed: 'I have nothing to say and I'm saying it.' Richter, meanwhile, is painting it.

Exhibition continues to 16.11.08.

Click here to find out more about Gerhard Richter.

Or click here to see what else is on at the Serpentine Gallery.

*Spoonfed's Culture Editor was invited to the Private View and is afraid to report that there was no free wine at all. In fact, the Serpentine charged £3.50 a glass - far beyond his lowly art-viewing budget. 

SUSIE