This review is republished from Nick Bruno’s blog, The Rain Falls Down on Portlandtown.
There’s a near absolute adherence to truth in advertising embedded in the title of Corrina Belz‘ new documentary, Gerhard Richter Painting. It’s a film almost entirely based in the observation of craft. Belz’ camera watches quietly and without emotion as the German master works his way through multiple applications and reapplications of color and texture, smeared and scraped across several massive canvases. Those who work and live around the artist — his wife, gallerist and the odd friend or two from the past — appear briefly, temporarily interrupting his efforts, but the focus here is on Richter’s communion with the works in progress as he dramatically morphs them over and over again, searching for an image that is neither preconceived nor, as he puts it, entirely unplanned.
