Gerhard Richter and Kara Walker

Gerhard Richter

Express- graphite on paper- 1965- 53 X 45 Cm

Richter is a painter, sculptor and drawer and is also a very productive artist; he produces so much work every year. However he is now facing criticism for the fact that it is now becoming to look a bit factory base creating work for the sake of it, a problem that many modern painters art trying to overcome and avoid doing. For each different media his work is very different the painting very abstract, the sculptors very architectural, but then on the side you have photorealist paintings and drawings that are very sketchy.

Richter is an artist who likes to explore colour this is what most of his painting are about loads of different colour combinations, however at the same time his work seems to have this emptiness there doesn't seem to be any other form of emotion or anything like that behind it. It's just colour on a canvas and that's what it is. This isn't as easy in a drawing when you only have black and greys to play with, they drawings seem to try harder to provoke an emotion but they just seem a little lost, Richter says that he just wants to create something that pleases the eye, but then how is his work any different to wallpaper.

I wanted to looks at some of Richter's drawings to look at the way that he uses figures and shapes in the work. The drawings are simple and look as if they have been very quick to do they look carefree, but as I said earlier lost. They are smudged over the top to almost create a distraction from the figure its self. Most of the drawings are there to develop his ideas for his later works. However they don't look anything like any of his final pieces there is almost a missing link in the work.

Gerhard Richter: Panorama 2011

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/

Kara Walker

His story never dies

I wanted to look at Walkers work because of the atheistic connection between mine and her work. However Walker work deals with very serious issues to do with race, power and sexuality. These are quite controversial subjects they bring up issues people don't really want to talk about. She wanted to follow in the footsteps of her father in becoming an artist it was always what she wanted to do from a very young age. She became very interested in these controversial themes when she was at university and when she experienced racism first hand; he work is very personal to her.

Her work is made our of paper that has been cut out then placed on a white wall, the scale of these are huge and there is a surprising amount of detail in these cut-outs. The images that are depicted in the work are often representational of fairytales, but of a fair more mature type. The contrast of the black and white against each other isn't just a stab at racism but it makes the story so much clearer to understand.

Walker wanted the work to provoke an outrage or some sort of shock she wants to get people thinking, to almost get them on her side. I personally really like the work and think it's something that you could look at time and time again and come away from it feeling different. I think that it is important in my work that I will find something like Walker to drive it forward.

http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker/Main/RepresentingRace