Lot 17 N

The artist book „War Cut“ pertains to Gerhard Richter’s most significant works with historical-political context. The conceptionally designed book combines newspaper articles published at the outset of the war in Iraq on 20th and 21st March 2003 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [a German newspaper] featuring detailed photographs which Richter himself had taken from his oil painting “Abstraktes Bild Nr. 648-2” [abstract painting no. 648-2] a year earlier in 1987. The compiled texts address political, economic, social, and cultural implications induced by the start of the war. They are combined without comment into a condensed unit and allow for reciprocal associations.
Richter overworked the book covers of the copies of the special edition with a squeegee and oil paint in vibrant tones of red, yellow, and green. “While inside the book, you will find reproduced detailed photographs of abstract squeegee painting, the book cover features real paint. This, however, is not the only link between the inside and the outside as, from the point of view of the artist, the design of the book cover represents a demonstrative contrast to the newspaper texts and the horror of the war. In an interview with Neue Zurcher Zeitung [a Swiss newspaper], Richter describes the painting on the book-cover as something magical and marvellous. The complete opposite of war.” (Hubertus Butin, Gerhard Richter, Unikate in Serie, Cologne 2017, p.152)