Visited the Gerhard Richter exhibition at the National Gallery in Edinburgh today. Although familiar with his work, I have always been keener on Warhol, an opinion bolstered by the Warhol exhibition in the same gallery last summer which was excellent. I had until today been unaware that Richter painted the image of a candle used on the cover of Sonic Youth’s brilliant Daydream Nation. The candle is said to represent life at a time when Richter was pre-occupied with death and dealing with his own mortality.
Candle
I was lucky enough to see Sonic Youth at Strathclyde University in March 1989 shortly after the release of Daydream Nation. They did a 2 night stint supported by Mudhoney and I still have the set list taken from the stage after the show.
Sonic Youth Setlist
Managed to catch them at the ABC in Glasgow, August last year and still as good as ever almost 20years on!
The Richter exhibition is well worth a look(free if you are under 22, £6/£4 otherwise). I particularly liked a painting of 2 blurred fiats and XL 513, fighter plane. The more abstract larger canvases didn’t excite me much, too much going on and i loved the alpine triptych which would look great in my front room. There is a good cross section of work spanning most of his life and the great thing is that it has made me look at his work again and realise i am much more familiar with it than I had initially thought.
Infinitely better than the recent Emin retrospective(although it was still a must) and shows how artists can, should and need to adapt and experiment in various styles in order to have longevity.
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/exhibition/5:368/5615
scarpadog 
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