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7 December 2016, 5:13 pm CET

In Memory of Sigmar Polke by Gerhard Richter

by Gerhard Richter December 7, 2016
Frau Baker, 1965.
Frau Baker, 1965.
Frau Baker (1965).

The size of many of my pictures is 150 x 200 cm, 130 x 150 cm, 130 x 140 or 120 cm; some of them are 160 x 180 cm, some substantially smaller, about 40 x 30 or even 18 x 24 cm. The biggest size picture was 200 x 190 cm, so far. Perhaps I shall only paint small-size pictures or medium-size ones and a few large ones; I would not know this exactly.

A souvenir of my childhood: I let my little sister run down a hill on her toboggan without thinking that she would not be able to avoid an iron banister. The result was a deep cut on her forehead. She had to be sewn, and I got a hiding.

Carlton looked at the front gardens, the birds, and the women; then the scales fell from his eyes — he knew that he would never grasp all that. He asked me for a cigarette and took leave. Amidst the terrible uproar of the released atomic energy, the ball of space, high as a mountain, stood out against the grey soil of Sexta. The glistening outbursts of its door-size power units gave the impression of a small sun, and in front of the frantically speeding circular fire barrel glowing lava waves rolled across the plain.

The men in the control room did not feel much of all that. Very few of them had enough time to look at the screened monitors; the others had seen this before.

Perry Rhodan sat at the control board from where he could survey the entire control room. His singularly shaped table contained its own intercom and telecom connexions.

Mory, his wife, had sat down on one of the additional seats which were placed all around, so did Melbar Kasom who needed a special seat, however, and Atlan. Gucky’s place was empty. Surely, the musk-rat wandered around somewhere in the spaceship.

Rhodan had only given his wife a brief nod prior to the take-off. During a mission, they were just companions, associates of a battle, the end of which may lie somewhere in eternity. Their feelings had to stand back behind their responsibility for the celestial sphere of humanity.

The large mouth of the Haluter opened into a broad smile. His great big eyes glittered slightly. His nodding made him look human. “It could have been worse,” he said calmly. “It was me who made the main mistake. I should have transmitted my knowledge about spores to the memory section of my coded brain… You may believe it or not, but I do see my surroundings dotted.”

“I love all dots. I’m married to a multitude of dots. I wish all dots to be happy.”                  

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. He lives and works in Cologne.

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