Gerhard Richter

The contemporary painter Gerhard Richter (born in 1932) has been heralded both as modernity's last painter and as painting's modern savior, seen to represent both the end of painting and its resurrection. Richter works in a dizzying variety of styles, from abstraction to a German cool pop that combines painterly technique and appropriation; his work includes photo paintings, large abstract canvases, and stained glass windows. This collection features writing by prominent critics, including Hal Foster, Gertrud Koch, and Thomas Crow; essays by Rachel Haidu and Johannes Meinhardt that are published here for the first time; and an essay and two interviews with the artist by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Richter's "longtime sparring partner" (as the curator Robert Storr has called him). These writings examine Richter's work as a whole, from October 18, 1977,his dreamlike series of paintings depicting the dead Baader-Meinhof gang, to his abstract trio Abstract Paintings;from his unsettling portrait of "Uncle Rudi" in Nazi garb to his late series of portraits of his wife and young child. This addition to the October Files series will be an essential handbook to one of the most enigmatic figures in contemporary art. October Files

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University. He is the author of Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (MIT Press, 2001) and editor of October.