“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 (without design) 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.”

— Gerhard Richter

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 51, note 60

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The photograph reproduces objects in a different way from the painted picture, because the camera does not apprehend ob…" by Gerhard Richter?

Gerhard Richter 96

German visual artist, born 1932 1932

Related quotes

“Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest" - Tom Waits "Foreign Affairs”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object and anyone who gets involved enough in this finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever it is that he's doing. He is making a thing.... all I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion... What you see is what you see.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quote from: 'Questions to Stella and Judd', Bruce Glaser, Art News, September 1966, p 58-59
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

“And its seeing is Unconditioned,
Being without manner,
And it is neither thus nor thus,
Neither here nor there;
For that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all,
And the vision is made high and wide.
It knows not itself where That is which it sees;
and it cannot come thereto, for its seeing is in no wise,
and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without return.
That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full,
Nor wholly attain, for its apprehension is wayless,
and without manner,
And therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend Him.
Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless,
Is intermediary between contemplation
In images and similitudes of the intellect,
And unveiled contemplation
Beyond all images in the Light of God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

“When you represent in your work shadows which you can only discern with difficulty, and of which you cannot distinguish the edges so that you apprehend them confusedly, you must not make them sharp or definite lest your work should have a wooden effect.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance

“To be an evasion, a thing not apprehended or
Not apprehended well. Does the poet
Evade us, as in a senseless element?”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: p>Is there a poem that never reaches words And one that chaffers the time away?
Is the poem both peculiar and general?
There’s a meditation there, in which there seemsTo be an evasion, a thing not apprehended or
Not apprehended well. Does the poet
Evade us, as in a senseless element?</p