Victoria Reiter – Looking Outwards – 06

4900 Colours by Gerhard Richter

A woman viewing 4900 Colors

4900 Colors is a piece by German artist Gerhard Richter, comprised of 196 square panels of 25 coloured squares each, which can be rearranged in any number of ways to constantly create a new viewing experience.

A computer program assigns a color to each square chosen randomly from a selection of 25 colors. A program can also be used to decide how to combine and hang the panels, thus making their arrangement even more distanced from the “artist’s” hands.

View of 4900 Colors at exhibition and Richter explaining his work

As is discussed in this handy article, it is important to note that randomness does not always look how we imagine it. True randomness develops some patterns, there may be the same color which happens to group itself together, which may not appear random to our human eyes trained in detecting patterns, but which reflects the true randomness of nature.

This piece was interesting to me because it makes me question at what point do humans cease being the “artists”, and must instead pass the credit for art pieces off to the computers which make them? This was a statement Gerhard alluded to, when he said discussed “eradicating any hierarchy of subject or representational intent, and focusing on color to create an egalitarian language of art” (full information available here). While perhaps his intentions are noble, what is the point of art if it does not reflect someone’s intentions? Is there a truly objective art? And is this art we as humans are able to value?