Throwaway Snapshots Come Closest To

I Often Need A Long Time To Understand Things, To Imagine A Painting I Might Make.

I Wanted To Say Something Different: The Pictures Are Also A Leave-taking, In Several Respects. Factually: These Specific Persons Are Dead; As A General Statement, Death Is Leave-taking. And Then Ideologically: A Leave-taking From A Specific Doctrine Of Salvation And, Beyond That, From The Illusion That Unacceptable Circumstances Of Life Can Be Changed By This Conventional Expedient Of Violent Struggle.

These Pictures Possibly Give Rise To Questions Of Political Content Or Historical Truth. Neither Interests Me In This Instance. And Although Even My Motivation For Painting Them Is Probably Of No Significance, I Am Trying To Put A Name To It Here, As An Articulation, Parallel To The Pictures, As It Were, Of My Disquiet And Of My Opinion.

But I Have A Problem With The Term 'light'. I Never In My Life Knew What To Do With That. I Know That People Have Mentioned On Some Occasions That 'richter Is All About Light', And That 'the Paintings Have A Special Light', And I Never Knew What They Were Talking About. I Was Never Interested In Light. Light Is There And You Turn It On Or You Turn It Off, With Sun Or Without Sun. I Don't Know What The 'problematic Of Light' Is. I Take It As A Metaphor For A Different Quality, Which Is Similarly Difficult To Describe. Good.

Yes, We Were Amazed When That Happened. It Was A Real Joke To Us. Konrad Lueg And I Did A Happening, And We Used The Phrase Just For The Happening, To Have A Catchy Name For It; And Then It Immediately Got Taken Up And Brought Into Use. There's No Defence Against That - And Really It's No Bad Thing.