http://www.painters-online.co.uk artistMarch 2020 3
H
ow important is it for artists to be able to recognise and/or admit to past ‘failures’?
I’m prompted to pose the question after reading about veteran German artist
Gerhard Richter who told the German Press Agency that of the 500 rediscovered
sketches he allegedly drew before defecting with his wife from East to West
Germany in 1961, ‘half of it is junk and should be burnt’. Apparently two A4 folders lled with
around 500 random drawings and sketches entitled ‘Gerhard Richter Early Works’ were being
o ered for sale by an anonymous seller for millions of euros. Some of Richter’s anger could
be attributed to his belief that many of the unsigned sketches were in fact produced by his
wife at the time, and were not his. Richter can a ord to be dismissive – he is said to be worth
an estimated £585 million – but dealers are even more upset. As one well-known auction
house manager in Munich is reported to have said, ‘selling Richters is di cult enough today- without these undermining comments by the artist himself ’.
On a more artistic level, however, some of Richter’s anger could also be attributed to his
embarrassment about the quality of such early work being made public. Richter isn’t the rst
artist to wish to play down the existence of work of a quality and style that may not match
his or her current creative output or public status. He did in fact destroy several paintings
from the early 1960s, which were left out of his catalogue raisonné, because he felt that they
weren’t representative enough of his overall oeuvre.
Simple frustration caused an artist as successful as Monet to destroy 15 waterlily paintings
he was working on for an exhibition in 1908, because he didn’t want to subject them to
public scrutiny, disappointed by their quality in comparison to ‘better’ canvases. Allegedly
Monet also requested that his daughter-in-law get rid of even more of his later works as he
faced death, concerned about how they might be viewed by future generations. As another
example, according to the Whitney Museum Georgia O’Keefe wished to destroy some of the
paintings in storage before her show there in the 1980s because she felt that they weren’t
of the right level. Then at the end of her life she wanted to purge more work she considered
not good enough in order to maintain her reputation.
The desire to destroy or deny early work, or ‘failures’, clearly has a long history and can
take many forms. For an inexperienced artist it’s also often di cult to distinguish between
the good and the bad. Doubt has always played an inherent role in the creative practice,
however, and there can be great potential in failure, too, for example the ‘happy accidents’
which artists often celebrate. So whilst success and perfection can of course be highly
satisfying, being open to failure and venturing into the unknown can be engaging and lead
to unexpected successes. To quote Samuel Beckett: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try
again. Fail again. Fail better.’
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Deborah Walker From the Eye, watercolour,
41 54½ in (104 138cm). See pages 20 to 23