Das Farben, 2009
title: Fig. 001 “Das Farben"
material: JPEG size: a4 year: 2009
Remax on Gerhard Richter’s well-known color chart paintings, which he began producing in the late 1960s. They were inspired by the commercial color charts found in hardware stores. Here, the different colors have no particular meaning or significance. He used color functions as a readymade, as an object found in the hardware store and another part of consumer culture. Even though the painting mimics a commercial color chart, the colors are not grouped in the same order. Instead, the painting was created through a predetermined mathematical system, and the colors were distributed at random across the grid. The white lines that form the grid are equally spaced, and each color occupies equal space within the painting. This kind of distribution points to indifference and meaninglessness: it is part of the artist’s premise that it is impossible to combine colors in a meaningful way. And Pantone, best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color naming system used in a variety of industries, notably graphic design, fashion design, product design, printing (including print design), and manufacturing and supporting the management of color from design to production, in physical and digital formats, across coated paper and uncoated paper stocks, as well as cotton, polyester, nylon and plastics.
https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/abstracts/colour-charts-12