Brautpaar 1966

This is Brautpaar, or "Bridal Couple," by Gerhard Richter and it's all in dreamy blues. Richter is great, he thinks of artmaking as a process, you can tell! There's something so interesting about how Richter plays with the surface here. The texture is smooth, almost like a photograph, but then the blurring gives it this unreal quality. It's hard to tell what kind of tools he used, which adds to the mystery. That smear of blue across their faces is a great, almost aggressive, gesture. It keeps the painting from being overly sentimental. Think of Francis Picabia who also embraced chance and experimentation. Both artists remind us that art isn't about perfection, but about the messy, beautiful process of seeing and feeling the world.