Kerze (DDN Candle) to be sold
 

Painting that adorned classic album to be sold

 

The photo-painting Kerze by the German artist Gerhard Richter, is expected to exceed its £2.5m auction guide price thanks to the popularity of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation



By Jonathan Brown
Monday, 18 February 2008




The painting that illustrated one of the most famous album covers in pop history is to be sold at auction. Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation scarcely troubled the charts when it was released in 1988 but has since been recognised as a rock masterpiece, regularly featuring in best album lists.

Later this month, fans of Eighties nostalgia will also have the chance to buy the art that gave the record one of the classiest covers ever produced.
The photo-painting, Kerze (Candle), is the work of avant-garde German artist Gerhard Richter. The original canvas will be put up for sale at Sotheby's in London next week and is likely to sell for several times its catalogue price of £2.5m.
Recently, Richter's canvases have sold at auction in the United States for up to £6.5m. Experts believe that Kerze, given its association with the ultra-hip New York band, will be a "potential flyer" for the elderly German painter.
According to Francis Outred, head of evening auctions and private sales of contemporary art at Sotheby's, the work will strongly appeal to collectors who came of age in the 1980s and now find themselves with a few million pounds to their name.
"There are a lot of collectors out there who grew up loving these pieces and now have the opportunity to buy them," he said.
"This is a unique collaboration of a painter that people want with an album cover by one of the greatest American bands of all time. The fact this is the very picture that was used – taken from a series of 20 paintings – makes it even more special."
Mr Outred explained that Richter never intended his work to be used to accompany the music and had almost certainly never heard of the band.
Nevertheless, the association had added considerable artistic cache to the group and created one of the "greatest album covers of all time".
The 3ft by 3ft canvas is part of a series of paintings completed when Richter was at the height of his power. It is one of five major works to go on sale and was based on a photograph taken in the artist's Dusseldorf studio.
After experimenting with Pop Art in the 1960s, Richter rejected the conventional painting of items in nature. Instead, inspired by his experience as a darkroom assistant and his passion for photography, he began to paint images that he said had "no style, no concept, no judgement".
According to Mr Outred, Kurze takes a timeless romantic symbol and brings it powerfully up to date. The candle itself alludes to the "fragility and mortality" of human experience – a theme accentuated by the application of Richter's "blurring" technique in which he would take a small dry brush to soften the wet paint.
Daydream Nation was the sixth major work by Sonic Youth.
Last year, the band re-released a deluxe version of the double album, complete with live versions and extra studio material. They have also embarked on a world tour, performing the album in its entirety.

Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London, 27 February

Thanks for the article Moshe!

2.5 million quid?!?!?!?!

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

who's going to buy it? ...somebody rich.

Perhaps we could all club together and buy.... a square centimetre of it?

ultra-hip New York band?

Ha, I saw this in the Metro, which is a crappy free London newspaper.
It said something like "although the album was a flop in the UK...". If it was a flop, I guess it was for all the right reasons.

wait, was this painted for the album?

Nope, SY just used the image, it's part of a series of works Richter did.

i just bought it. i'm flying out in my private jet in a few hours to pick it up. i'm giving it to the girl from paramore because i feel bad she got gang raped by her band.

Hu?

This is definitely art my friend.

That wasn't my point at all. I was just linking to an older and somewhat supplementary post.

As to the aesthetic validity of "Kerze," of course it's art.

Although, bear in mind that it was made by merely projecting a photograph onto a small canvas and color-matching; or perhaps it was only just color-matched and painted right over the mounted photo itself! What saves it are its formal qualities of color and composition; and the content itself (a painting of a sole candle), provides excellent narrative as a subject. Also to the painting's credit, Richter's "blurring technique" (employed with a dry brush onto partially-dried oils) is somewhat unique (in modern art anyway). I'd like to know more about what possible lacquers and varnishes he uses. And, of course, "Kerze" is really the signature piece (owing to SY and DDN) of Gerhard's hyperrealistic works.

IMO, Mr. Richter owes SY a gratuitous payday. Not that it will ever happen, mind you (i.e., the world is fucked-up). He's getting up there in age anyhow.

BTW, don't get too ired by what you may perhaps perceive as possible provocation, but I've seen "Kerze" (and other similar (he has several candles) hyperreal Richter works like "Skull" too) in person. That candle flame is quite extraordinary. I've also seen a series of larger AbEx canvases by Richter done up in a palette-knifing style with rather garish and brutish colors. As far as "contemporary" German artists go, Anselm Kiefer is better, but I still like Richter.

SY's record label (whoever it is now) should buy it and give it to them.

from bloomberg

Richter's 1983 painting, ``Kerze (Candle),'' featured on the cover of Sonic Youth's 1988 album ``Daydream Nation,'' fetched 7.1 million pounds, or 8 million pounds with commission.

damn me and my 7.05 million pounds offer...

It looks really great hanging in my toilet.

that "l" stands for "loo" , then?

It's "lavatory", thank you very much. You damn plebian!

i would so get that if i was loaded

\


3 FOOT BY 3 FOOT IS NOT A SMALL PAINTING

OH TO HAVE MILLIONS HANDY

quid?

quim?

you brits make me laugh!

again i ask...

who the fuck are paramore????????????????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JyS7Mp9QM
THEY ROCK!!!!

I'm so sick of that song. It is in constant rotation over here.

but THEY ROCK!!!!!! :D:D:D
p.s. i loled a lot becuz the youtube search gives a lot of results and all the first 3 or 4 said "this video is not available in your country", kind of a "protection program" ha ha.

They are ok, not my cup of tea. God, but they get played like five times in an hour. I am exaggerating of course.

well, I was actually 100% joking about the " they rock!!!" thing, eh...crappy happy-emo-youngsters-dressed-to-impressss-the-young-audience.no?

Don't need to lie, you love them don't you.

By the way, I wish I could buy that painting.

damn, you got me... must be that feeling of "prohibited stuff" given by those "this video is not available in your country" notices...I hope they're distributed over here. back on topic, I might have the ddn cover printed BIG on photo paper in a lab...

are you talking about the girl with the david bowie hair?

ha ha, true.

If anyone in GB saw the Griff Rhys Jones programme on London last night (15/10, ITV - ugh), he went to Christies for the evening and I'm sure there were a couple of flashes of the Kerze piece - suggesting that it was being sold the night he popped by - alas, the segment focussed more on the sale of a big gold egg with holes in it. But even the quick cut-to's made the candle piccie look very nice.

-edit- having reread the top of this thread, it was prob Sotherbys rather than Christies, same ole same ole....

I want it

Nor is it a large painting.

The ones I saw in person were all smaller than 3' x 3'.

a friend of mine painted 'kerze' on a wall in my room back in my parents' house in '96. I'd sell the wall if anyone wants it. I'll post a picture.
Another friend of mine made an oil painting of the group shot from the original lp. It has some blank spots in it cause it's unfinished but that's just postmodern. anyone interested?

http://www.list.co.uk/article/13932-gerhard-richter/

Gerhard Richter

• Source: The List (Issue 616) <LI class=date>Date: 30 October 2008
• Written by: Neil Cooper

Gerhard Richter: Familie am Meer (Family at the Sea)
Man for all seasons

Neil Cooper gets the lowdown on a major new exhibition of work by the man considered by some to be the greatest German artist of the post World War II era
When Sonic Youth toured their 1988 Daydream Nation album in 2007 on the back of the same year's two-CD deluxe edition of what had originally been the New York art rock pioneers' final independent release, the original LP cover art was probably the last thing on the minds of anyone watching. Yet, Gerhard Richter's 1983 and 1982 'Kerze' ('Candle') paintings, which adorned both sides of the sleeve, was a crucial part of Daydream Nation's original package. Effectively one work of art wrapped round another, it was an unmistakably explicit statement on the seriousness of both parties.
The major retrospective that is Gerhard Richter: Paintings from Private Collections, which the 1982 'Kerze' forms part of, is equally serious. From pop art beginnings, Richter has moved from photo-realism to abstraction and back again, embracing all facets of painting as a creative form when the rise of conceptualism declared that painting was dead.
Despite the ficklenesses of fashion, German-born Richter determinedly stuck to his guns. Today, with a back-catalogue covering all stylistic bases, this first major UK show since 1991, drawn from the Frieder Burda and other private collections, opens the door on an artist often hailed as the greatest painter alive.
'It's almost like seeing an exhibition by ten different artists,' notes Keith Hartley, chief curator and deputy director of the National Galleries of Scotland. 'There are fine representations of his early 1960s work right through his colourful 1980s abstractions, as well as work from the 1990s and some late figurative work based on Richter's own photographs. There are also some very recent abstract works from the last couple of years. People have been saying painting is dead ever since photography started, but Richter will explore every possibility of how he might do things, and there are conceptual elements in his work. He has been a shot in the arm for painters, because he shows that painting can still be a powerful force.'
Richter's influence could be seen recently at Dundee Contemporary Arts, whose Altered States Of Paint group show reinvigorated painting even as it drew from the dark side of 1960s pop culture. Such a link went beyond the work itself. One of the artists taking part in Altered States was Jutta Koether, a long-term associate of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, who provided sleeve-notes for the 1993 re-issue of the aforementioned Richter-adorned Daydream Nation album.
More recently, Richter produced a stained-glass collage for Cologne Cathedral. While Hartley points out that Richter will never stand still in terms of form, his commitment to painting is unswerving. As Richter wrote as far back as 1973: 'One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For, basically, painting is idiocy.'
Gerhard Richter: Paintings From Private Collections, National Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 8 Nov-Sun 4 Jan.

Yes I'll buy a wall. Why don't you just fed-ex it to me.