The Engine

GERHARD RICHTER AT THE TATE MODERN  Gerhard Richter (b 1932, Dresden, Germany) typifies German suburbia, a Dresden artist who settled in Duesseldorf the middle class twin of neighbouring working class Cologne. As an Ossi who became a Wessi Richter settles on the disturbing facts of German history but also provides a commentary on perception, ways of seeing the past through unsettling images of his father, who he hardly knew, clownishly gaping at the artist through soft focus grey tones. His Uncle Rudi in Wehrmacht gear smiles endearingly at the artist/camera, for Richter early on decided upon photorealism as an art aesthetic through the then dominant medium of black & white photography. He gravitates through this to emerge into full colour abstraction as a further plausible re-invention before returning to grey photorealism in his depiction of the German autumn, the "suicides" of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Esslin in 1977.  In a retrospective view fro...

POSTMODERNISM: STYLE AND SUBVERSION at the Victoria & Albert Museum The curators of Postmodernism have traced the origins of the so-called Postmodern movement back to the '60s, to the work of Ettore Sottsas (1917-2007) and Alessandro Mendini (1931- ). The focus on radical design and dystopian possiblities is reminiscent of some of the typical movements of the former part of the 20th century and Postmodernism does seem to be an outcrop (or a barren outcrop) of both Surrealism and Futurism (which also originated in Italy). The exhibition binds a host of diverse artists, architects, alternate movements to it's thesis that Postmodernism was a driving force in culture from the 60s onwards, eventually feeding into the mass culture of the 1980s before ultimately dissipating. Postmodernism is presented as binding together different cultural possibilities such as the typifying admixture of high art, classicism and pop culture owing aesthetic loyalty only to the next hollow cli...