It appears that Daniel Richter owes a debt to Doig in his move twoards figurative image making. It was the impact of Doig’s work which seemed to have been the protagonist in moving Richter away from the swirling ‘abstract’ canvases he had been making. Richter’s work is certainly no pastiche though. Through an evolution from his past practise, national tendencies and a certain wit he provides an alternative vision to Doig.
There is something about Richters figurative work which borrows from the aesthetic of his abstractions. I tihnk it is to do with composiotion. I mean composition in a broad sense of the devices used to tie the parts together as a whole.
In both all his work Richters paintings have a musical quality, which seem appropriate form his time spent in that industry. His process of constructing images reminds me of a musician like DJ shadow or James Lavelle. That process of gathering together a sereis of unconnected samples and then tieing them together in a unifeid, even if fragmented, whole. For DJ Shadow it is rhythm which holds together the various voices, melodies and sound clips. For Richter it is the painterly aesthetic which ties the various images and visuals as a whole.
Yet these painterly elements seem to be more expressive nad diverse in his figurative work; which belies the notion of images holding back mark making. I think this is due to the fact that in his abstractions Richter has to create rhythms from the marks, in order to keep the whole connected to the parts. It feels as if they are struggling agasint themselves and constrained by their need to be contained in a pattern based whole. Once he has images to work agasint, stages and figures, then he can apply his materials in any manner he wishes, as long as some semblance of the image is kept alive. This battle between the two create a sereis of problems which necessitate creative responses. The previous problems posed by his abstract works resulted in problems which restricted such creative solutions. None of his abstract works have the vigour and freshness of the splatterings around the central figure below.
The painterly solutions he comes up with are far more dense and intense than Doig. They seem far more German in their form of expression.
His sourcing and use of imagery is different as well. For Doig melancholy and romanticism read Richter’s dark almost crass humour. Again the distinction feels like one connected to nationality. I am not saying its due to inherant genetic conditions, but the kind of traditions from which they draw. More specifically I think it relates to the kind of films, photographs, sourcebooks and artists from which they are inspired.
