This Great Allegory: On World-Decay and World-Opening in the Work of Art

by Gerhard Richter

An engagement with the relation between the world in which an artwork is created—a world that perishes or decays over time—and the new world that the artwork opens up.

Gerhard Richter explores the relation between two the world in which an artwork is created, that is, a world that over time perishes or decays beyond interpretive understanding, and the new world that the artwork opens up. The multiple relations between these worlds are examined in a number of central thinkers and in various modes of aesthetic production, including poetry, painting, music, film, literature, and photography. It is precisely in and through the work of art, Richter shows, that central elements of the thinking of world as world are negotiated in the most essential and moving ways.

Exploring the relationship between these worlds through art and European philosophy, Richter offers bold new interpretations of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida. The book also provides stimulating new insights into the works of heterogeneous artists such as Paul Celan, Friedrich Hölderlin, Werner Herzog, Arnold Schönberg, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Andrew Moore, Botho Strauß, Didier Eribon, and even prehistoric cave painters. In each case, Richter’s readings are guided by a consideration of the conceptual constraints and singular interpretive demands imposed by the specific genre and medium.

336 pages, Paperback

Published November 29, 2022

About the author

German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction.

Reviews

[Shannon Kim]

So I bought this thinking it was Richter the painter but apparently there are two white men named Gerhard Richter in the art world and one of them is NOT the painter and is an art critic who doesn’t seem to have read Heidegger that well. I did like the chapter on Marx though but he kind of lost me when he tried to loop Derrida into the world opening/decaying allegory. It took me a really long time to finish because I was really upset when I found out it was not Richter the painter who wrote this but nevertheless persisted and forced myself to stay awake tonight to finish reading this. However, I only did because I bought myself a cookie as a reward to eat this only once it was finished… which is telling as to why I rate this a 2/5….. cookies should be eaten and enjoyed with a book for double the initiator of joy, not self imposed as a “reward” for having to force myself to finish a book that I don’t really want to read