Oil paint on canvas
Portraits
Pop Art and its Legacy
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
National Heritage Memorial Fund
Art Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/gerhard-richter-1841" aria-label="More by Gerhard Richter" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Gerhard Richter</a>
Brigid Polk 305
ARTIST ROOMS
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
adults
artist, multi-media
arts and entertainment
blur
body
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
head / face
individuals: female
named individuals
people
photographic
Polk, Brigid
portraits
woman
work and occupations
<p>Richter has always displayed the importance of the subjects of his paintings, maintaining that he simply chooses amateur photographs that allow him to concentrate on the act of painting appearances. But he is obviously drawn towards certain subjects since he pastes photographs of them in his ‘Atlas’, or personal image bank. Richter painted five portraits of Brigid Polk, the highly idiosyncratic and extrovert member of Andy Warhol’s Factory. These portraits are significant, in that in them Richter began to use colour again, after having used only black, white and grey tones in his previous figurative paintings.</p><p><em>Gallery label, May 2011</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
2 October 2010 – 27 February 2011
2011-02-27
2 October 2010 – 27 February 2011
2011-02-27
2010-10-02
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery (Leicester, UK)
http://www.leicestermuseums.ac.uk
2010-10-02
ARTIST ROOMS 2010: Gerhard Richter
Loan-out
6 September 2014 – 6 December 2014
2014-12-06
6 September 2014 – 6 December 2014
2014-12-06
2014-09-06
Dick Institute (Kilmarnock, UK)
http://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/comser/arts_museums/venues.asp
2014-09-06
ARTIST ROOMS 2014: Gerhard Richter
Loan-out
26 September 2015 – 16 January 2016
2016-01-16
26 September 2015 – 16 January 2016
2016-01-16
2015-09-26
The Box (Plymouth, UK)
2015-09-26
ARTIST ROOMS 2015: Gerhard Richter
Loan-out
Brigid Polk (305)
support: 1750 × 1752 × 28 mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a>
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the <a href="/search?gid=999999967" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">National Heritage Memorial Fund</a> and the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 2008
<div class="text">
<p>This oil painting depicts the American artist Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk), whose face occupies the lower left corner of the canvas. Polk is featured in three-quarter profile, exposing the right side of her face and part of her left eye and cheek to an external light source. Her face is tilted slightly forward. Polk’s hair is parted on the right side with a volume of hair pushed away from her exposed face, although a few strands also seem to hang slightly over her left eye. A glint from the light source is noticeable in her right pupil, although she looks beyond the frame of the canvas. The painting has a limited colour palette, consisting largely of black, grey, and brown in addition to the flesh-coloured tones of the subject’s skin. Her shadow adds to the apparently unfocused smear of colour in the background.</p>
<p>The painting was completed after Richter met Polk in November 1970 during a trip to New York City. Though recognized primarily for her work in Andy Warhol’s studio, Polk was also known for what she termed her ‘tit prints’ (made directly from the artist’s breasts using paint on canvas) as well as for her documentation of everyday life through photography. In 1971 Richter produced five portraits using photographs of Polk, following his established practice of producing paintings from photographic sources including clippings from newspapers and other publications, amateur shots from various sources, and his own photographs. Of this technique, which the artist first used in 1962, Richter has said:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>In a sense this is a stylistic problem, the form is naturalistic, even though the photograph is not nature at all but a prefabricated product. I do not have to intervene artistically with style, since the stylization (deformation in form and colour) contributes only under very particular circumstances toward clarifying and intensifying an object or a subject (generally stylization becomes the central problem which obscures everything else), it leads to an unmotivated artificiality, an untouchable formalist taboo.<br/>(Quoted in Schneede, Westheider and Philipp 2011, p.56.)</blockquote>
<p>In some ways Richter’s turn to producing photographic paintings in the 1960s could be seen as a response to the recurrence of the ‘death of painting’ narrative, a ‘death’ that had been declared periodically since the invention of photography (as painting’s ‘replacement’) in the 1830s. Art historian Johannes Meinhardt argues that ‘Richter’s response to painting’s problematic status, was […] not to stop painting, but rather to rid his work of any hint of subjectivity.’ (Meinhardt 2009, p.136). Meinhardt observes that by the later twentieth century ‘it had become apparent that painting does not create any sort of transcendence or reveal essential truths, but simply produces visual effects’, to which Richter’s response was to focus on ‘exploring the specific reality of the painter’s methods, techniques, and mediums and the pictorial effects he produced’ (Meinhardt 2009, p.136). As a result Richter’s subject matter is, to a certain extent, arbitrary. The subject of the portrait could be, as the curator Paul Moorhouse notes, a close family member or a complete stranger (Moorhouse 2009, p.9).</p>
<p>This work, along with the four further portraits of Polk, proved a significant departure from Richter’s previously monochromatic palette of black, white, and grey tones. As Moorhouse suggests, while the artist’s former ‘use of monochrome had invested the resulting images with a certain austerity, colour now introduced the illusion of living warmth’ (Moorhouse 2009, p.119). The other four portraits of the artist, also entitled <i>Brigid Polk</i>, are held at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, the Böckmann Collection at the Neues Museum in Nuremberg, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in a private collection. Though it is not known who created them, the source photographs can be found in Richter’s collection of source images, <i>Atlas</i>, first published in 1972.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Johannes Meinhardt, ‘Illusionism in Painting and the Punctum of Photography’ in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh (ed.), <i>Gerhard Richter: Essays and Interviews</i>, Cambridge, MA 2009, pp.135–51.<br/>Paul Moorhouse, <i>Gerhard Richter Portraits: Painting Appearances</i>, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London 2009, pp.119–27.<br/>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_3?ie=UTF8&amp;field-author=Michael+Philipp&amp;search-alias=books&amp;text=Michael+Philipp&amp;sort=relevancerank">Michael Philipp</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;field-author=Uwe+M.+Schneede&amp;search-alias=books&amp;text=Uwe+M.+Schneede&amp;sort=relevancerank">Uwe M. Schneede</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_2?ie=UTF8&amp;field-author=Ortrud+Westheider&amp;search-alias=books&amp;text=Ortrud+Westheider&amp;sort=relevancerank">Ortrud Westheider</a> (eds.),<i> Gerhard Richter: Images of an Era</i>, exhibition catalogue, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg 2011, p.56.</p>
<p>Colleen Carroll<br/>The University of Edinburgh<br/>October 2013</p>
<p>
<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
</p>
</div>

Summary
2016-03-18T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Richter has always displayed the importance of the subjects of his paintings, maintaining that he simply chooses amateur photographs that allow him to concentrate on the act of painting appearances. But he is obviously drawn towards certain subjects since he pastes photographs of them in his ‘Atlas’, or personal image bank. Richter painted five portraits of Birgid Polk, the highly idiosyncratic and extrovert member of Andy Warhol’s Factory. These portraits are significant, in that in them Richter began to use colour again, after having used only black, white and grey tones in his previous figurative paintings.</p>

Online caption
2009-04-16T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
adults artist, multi-media arts and entertainment blur body emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities head / face individuals: female named individuals people photographic Polk, Brigid portraits woman work and occupations