The Marian Goodman Gallery of New York City is currently hosting a Gerhard Richter show with a series of oil paintings called 911. Gerhard Richter is a painter who is revolutionary in the same way that Jackson Pollack was for the arts. Pollack began using a drip and splatter technique and at the time, this had never been seen before. In the same way, when Richter unveiled his first paintings, the artistic scene was in awe. He used a technique that smudged and blurred the oil paint colors that he used on the canvas. The result was a satin-matte effect that drew the viewer even deeper into the photograph and made the meaning even more poignant. The particular exhibit in question had a series of paintings in it that were a tribute to the twin towers and their magnificence.  These paintings were not a defined, linear representation of what actually happened. Rather, the paintings gave a sense that what happened, or what was actually depicted in the photo was not important. It was the circumstances, attitudes and emotions obscuring the event that were actually of influence. Hence his use of the smudging of the paints and colors  speaks with certainty of his intentions.

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