Gerhard Richter, Seascapes, Guggenheim Bilbao

Gerhard Richter, Seascape (Green-grey, cloudy), 1969

I have been in Europe almost as long as the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Bilbao. But after all these years, it took an exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s Seascapes to get me there. And I wouldn’t have gone for just any old Richter exhibition; the Seascapes are rarely exhibited, and never before have ten of them sat in one room together.

Gerhard Richter, Seascape, 1969

Of all the works on display, 17 pencil and ball point pen drawings from 1969 were the most exquisite. I had never seen them, and they were, as far as I could see about so much more than the sea. They were about the horizon line, where to place it in the image, and what happens when it is low, or what happens to the balance of the composition when the horizon is in the upper half of the image. And then, they became about how to make the sky luminous and the sea bathe in the light of the sun when the medium is as stable as graphite. Up close, I saw Richter thinking, about the size, dimensions, aspect ratio, horizontality, and verticality of composition. I also watched him negotiating the nuances of the distinction between light and shadow. They may have been small pencil sketches, but in these tiny drawings, the navigation of questions that will preoccupy Richter for another thirty years are already present.

Gerhard Richter, Seascape (Grey), 1969

As I reflected on the other paintings, most of which were made in 1969, I was reminded of how often artists such as Richter turn to the sea to explore the complexities of vision. For the viewer, there is the obvious quandary of what we are looking at: are they photographs or paintings, is it a sea or a landscape? We can never be sure until we read the title card, telling us these are oil paintings of the sea. But the ambiguity doesn’t stop there. Looking at a work such as Seascape (Green-grey, cloudy), 1969 I began to wonder where I was being placed by the painting. Am I half underwater, seeing the line between sky and water as if through goggles? Or am I looking from above? Or perhaps I am positioned on the shoreline as I had presumed was the case with all of the other images?

 

Gerhard Richter, Seascape, 1998

For me, the most extraordinary moment of the exhibition came in a detail saw that could never be seen in a reproduction. In Seascape 1998 – the one image on display owned by the Bilbao Guggenheim —the paint begins to disintegrate as the waves roll towards us, creating a sudden recognition that everything is falling apart on the canvas. As the waves move into the foreground of the painting, they crash onto others and the paint begins to blur. The details of oil on canvas turn into a famous Richter foggy obfuscation. Quite remarkably, the waves and painting come together at this moment, the sea merging with the shift from figuration to abstract painting. Moreover, the relationship between abstraction and the sea in motion continues well into the foreground of this particular painting, as well as back and forth across Richter’s oeuvre.  In the one, all over abstract grey painting in the exhibition (Seascape [Grey], 1969), swathes of grey paint like the wind over the ocean erase all hint of the horizon, and with them, all traces of figuration.

 

Gerhard Richter, Seascape, 1968

I was also struck by Richter’s ability to depict light falling out of the sky, hovering over the waves, illuminating them with an ethereal effulgence. In these moments, there is a coming together of paint and color, light and the sea to reflect nature in abstraction. Such moments, recognizeable in, for example, Seascape, 1968, Richter is surely commenting on the relationship between the sea and abstraction as it has been explored in the history of art.

Gerhard Richter, Seascape (with Olive Clouds), 1969

The accompanying text assures us that Richter’s seascapes are somehow related to those of Caspar David Friedrich’s famous Monk by the Sea. They tell us that Richter’s paintings are Romantic, and that in them the visitor is put in the place of the visionary. However, this strikes me as misleading in every way: the seascapes actually work to stymie all yearning, enlightenment and insight. There is no miracle happening on these horizons. The line is always foreshortened, and Richter’s visitor is never allowed to dream. He may nod towards the possibility, for example, in those paintings where the horizon collapses into the sky (or the other way round) and the works gesture towards a pure, depth filled abstraction. But ultimately, our attempts at contemplation are always frustrated. We are not allowed to dive into these seas. This play with the conventional representation of the sea is, of course, the point. And it  is also why visitors often don’t know what they are meant to be looking at. I watched the visitors rush through the small exhibition, often thinking they had missed something. I wished they would discard the misleading audioguides and look at the paintings. Because this is the only way to experience Richter's seascapes: to watch the ebb and flow of paint as it moves across and around these canvases. 

All images copyright Gerhard Richter