Mirror, Blood Red

1991

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

Featured in Western painting since the Renaissance and approached by modernists as a literal self-reflexive device, the mirror was used in American Minimalist sculpture of the 1960s to trigger a new sort of perceptual self-presence. For Richter, making reverse-pigmented mirrors became a way to quietly challenge the avant-garde monochrome as well as to explore a counterpoint to the gestural, vivid exuberance of his own painting. "In the case of the colored mirrors, the result was a kind of cross between a monochrome painting and a mirror, a ‘Neither/Nor’—which is what I like about it." Encounter with this example simultaneously enables and convolutes a narcissistic desire for mirroring; spectators confront their own presence, saturated in the bloodred chroma.

Artwork Details

Overview

Exhibition History

Title: Mirror, Blood Red
Artist: Gerhard Richter (German, born Dresden, 1932)
Date: 1991
Medium: Enamel behind glass
Dimensions: 35 1/16 × 36 1/4 in. (89 × 92 cm)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Private collection
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art