Gerhard Richter

“Art should be serious, not a joke. I don't like to laugh about art.”

“I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things.”

“We've lost these qualities, these abilities to do something by hand. Some illustrators have it still, but it's just not art. We have photography. We have cameras and computers that do it better and faster.”

“I have always been structured. What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting.”

“When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.”

“Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor.”

“I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.”

“I have painted my family so frequently because they are the one who really affect me the most.”

“Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy.”

“Chance determines our lives in important ways.”

“I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.'”

“Without form, communication stops... without form, you have everybody burbling on to themselves, whenever and however, things that no one else can understand and - rightly - no one else is interested in.”

“To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.”

“I believe in painting and I believe in eating too. What can we do? We have to eat, we have to paint, we have to live. Of course, there are different ways to survive. But it's my best option.”

“I can't paint as well as Vermeer.”

“Every museum is full of nice things. That's the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things.”

“A father draws boundaries and calls a halt, whenever necessary. As I didn't have that, I was able to stay childishly naive that much longer - so I did what I liked, because there was nobody stopping me, even when I got it wrong.”

“People won't stop painting, just as they won't stop making music or dancing. This is a facility we have. Children don't stop doing it or having it. On the other hand, it seems we don't need painting anymore. Culture is more interested in entertaining people.”

“Politicians are nauseating by definition... They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.”

“It's our culture, Christian history, that's what formed me. Even as an atheist, I believe. We're just built that way.”