Gerhard Richter on Knowledge

"I can't say what they are about. I don't think they are expressionistic. I don't know why people say that. Why not say they are like Chinese paintings or like batik? People also talk about the quality of light in the paintings. 'Ah, the light!' Or 'Ah, the space!' It's phony reverence. It's ridiculous."

"Their permanent presence compels us to produce something different, which is neither better nor worse, but which has to be different because we painted the Isenheim Alter yesterday.. ..the better we know tradition – i.e., ourselves and the more responsibly we deal with it, the better things we will make similar, and the better things we will make different."

"When I first painted a number of canvases grey all over , I did so because I did not know what to paint, or what there might be to paint: so wretched a start could lead to nothing meaningful. As time went on, however, I observed differences of quality among the grey surfaces – and also that these betrayed nothing of the destructive motivation that lay behind them. The pictures began to teach me. By generalizing a personal dilemma, they resolved it."

"The photograph reproduces objects in a different way from the painted picture, because the camera does not apprehend objects: it sees them. In 'free-hand drawing' the object is apprehended in all it parts.. .By tracing the outlines with the aid of a projector you can bypass and elaborate this process of apprehension. You no longer apprehend but see and make what you have not apprehended. And when you don't know what you are making, you don't know, either, what to alter or distort."

"As a role that everyone has. I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: 'Ah, yes, that's how he sees the world, that's his interpretation."