Benjamin Buchloch on Gerhard Richter

Last night I attended Benjamin Buchloch's lecture on Gerhard Richter's glass works at the Dia Center. The lecture was a surprise on several fronts: I did not expect to be as intrigued by Richter's glass projects as I was, I did not expect the lecture to be so crowded, and I definitely did not expect Benjamin Buchloch to come across as affably as he did.Richter's glass works largely take the form of rectangular monochrome panes mounted to the wall on adjustable steel supports. At the beginning of the lecture, Buchloch's analysis focused on the monochromes as a sort of 'dense Minimalism.' He contrasted the ideological complexity of these pieces - notably Eight Gray, a series of eight of these panels recently executed - with the 1960s American Minimalists' absolute rejection of interpretation and 'meaning.' Buchloch stated that Richter's monochromes are so loaded with dualisms and tension - the definitions of painting and architecture, the relationship between painting and architecture, the history of the monochrome, issues of transparency, perfection, reflection, translucency, opacity, and industrial fabrication, among others - that a dialectic is hidden within the work, ingested by it. Richter's becomes an all-inclusive Minimalism, like a vacuum that sucks meaning and interpretation into the work, supporting the contradictions like Atlas and leaving the space around it airless and 'minimal.' It's an interesting inversion that provides a road out from the resolute muteness of the Minimalist work with which I am familiar while not abandoning its formal characteristics.At the end of the lecture, an hour and a half later, Buchloch described Richter's project commissioned by the unified German government and installed in the restored Reichstag building. In its development from the original proposal (using images of Holocaust victims through a stage of abstraction via randomly chosen colors to its final installation [scroll down] as a triptych of colored glass monochromes bearing the three colors of the German flag), the project mirrors the process by which the creation of a national identity masks the ‘victims’ that do not fit into its picture. This is especially true in Germany, a country whose national identity was sewn together, ripped apart, and was in the process of being re-stitched at the time of this project (it still is). Also, none of those questions touch on other complications: the fact that the government sponsored/commissioned the work, that it is intended as a memorial, that it has plenty of formal issues worth discsussing, its status as an ‘anti-monument’ (Buchloch’s term), etc. As Buchloch stated in the Q&A afterward - a whole paper could be devoted to any one of these glass works without bringing up every issue they engage and still ignoring their relationship to Richter's paintings and other work.The middle part of his lecture was devoted to historically situating the work within a larger arc of 20th century cultural production. It can most easily be summed up as 'an aesthetic history of glass in art and architecture of the twentieth century,' which seems like it would be a quite interesting book on its own.- - -As I mentioned, the lecture itself was packed. There were hundreds of folding chairs and still plenty of people were sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls. I found myself thinking during the middle of the evening that New York City is amazing in its ability to hold within its borders so many people devoted to such an admittedly arcane topic. It was heartening, and the fact that I made a new friend also helped.- - -Prior to the lecture, Buchloch seemed to possess an impenetrable mind: his writing has almost universally come across as opaque and the structure of his essays as labyrinthine. Last night, in his speaking voice, he came across not only with clarity, but with character - a likeable character at that. It imparted to me a desire to go back and work my way through his earlier texts. This was the opposite of my response to Dave Hickey's lecture on Alfred Jensen, held at the same venue perhaps eight months ago, where I was turned off by the very bravura and swagger that first attracted me to his writing. It is interesting how one's impression of a person's character can influence something as seemingly stand-alone as a body of writing. In total, I'm glad to have attended.And it didn't hurt that, as a response to the very last question from the audience, he took a few shots at Jorge Pardo's work, confirming my own take on a body of work that I feel is vastly overrated.- - -Welcome to the journal. I intend to fill it with reflections on cultural forms (mostly art and architecture, I imagine) I come into contact with and my life in the city. I hope it proves to be of some interest. "In search" is a thinly veiled reference to Bas Jan Ader's final art project, In Search of the Miraculous, as well as a description of my perpetual state of mind.