German painter Gerhard Richter confronts Dirk Reinartz's camera with a disarmingly frank stare. Richter's tendency to switch between colorful abstraction and monochromatic photorealism has been attributed to a purposeful rejection of artificial categories. The artist himself has cited his need for continual, intense self-examination. Considering the scope of his work in a 1989 interview, Richter insisted that all his paintings, abstract or otherwise, depict "something very directly and very naively, and are very dependent on how I am feeling."

Dirk Reinartz (born 1947)
C-print, 1988
Published February 1989
Dirk Reinartz
©Dirk Reinhartz

Portrait of the Art World: A Century of ARTnews Photographs
National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution

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