Whitworth gallery,Manchester International festival; Lichfield festivalGerhard Richter’s paintings and Arvo Pärt’s music complement each other perfectlyJudging by the warm smiles, joyful tears and gleeful hugs between them, or Manchester international festival nurtured a profound friendship when it introduced two of the world’s noteworthy artists,Gerhard Richter and composer Arvo Pärt, and suggested they work together. It’s a match made in heaven.
Richter has a long, and symbiotic relationship with music. One of his paintings was used as an album cover by Sonic Youth in 1988; a book of overpainted photographs in homage to Steve Reich followed and then came the Bach (1992),four large summary paintings, using strict horizontal and vertical lines to echo the order of Johann Sebastian’s genius. Fourteen years later, and he became fascinated by the chance procedures of John Cage’s music and produced a cycle of six summary squeegee” pictures influenced by Cage’s compositional technique (and nowadays on show at Tate Modern).
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Source: theguardian.com