Gerhard Richter: Panorama at Tate Modern - Art museums & institutions - Time Out London

This is an amazing show. Every room contains something to inspire and delight:

Richter didn’t so much resuscitate painting as submit it to prolonged interrogation - pulling it up by its lapels and demanding it take stock of itself. He was no less forgiving of himself or his family, painting his Nazi-sympathizing father and ‘Uncle Rudi’ (in full uniform) in the same year as his ‘Aunt Marianne’ (1965), who was sterilised and euthanised for being schizophrenic. Why should we not also scrutinise ourselves a bit more, asks Richter’s strange mirrored and glazed sculptures, which blur and distort pictures and viewers alike. The sense of meanings shifting, swelling and dropping away like waves is just as disorienting as the jumps between Richter’s abstract colour charts and his romantic landscapes. His pure, DayGlo abstracts are twenty-first century Jackson Pollocks, but he also makes beautiful portraits. Go figure.

My favourite is “Reader” from 1994, a photo-realistic portrait of Richter’s wife reading a newspaper, with light and shadow dancing reverentially around her features.

I first saw it about ten years ago at the MOMA in San Francisco (though my memory could be deceiving me). It was strikingly beautiful then, and it’s even more beautiful now.