Sign up for a small monthly payment and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD
Make a one-time donation and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD
Support 3QD
Tag: Gerhard Richter
Thomas Ruff: Gagosian Gallery, London.
Posted on Monday, Apr 9, 2012 12:10AM Friday, December 8, 2017 by Sue Hubbard
by Sue Hubbard
When is a painting not a painting? When it's a photograph. Many of Thomas Ruff's images might, at first glance, be paintings by an American abstract expressionist. There is an irony that while so much contemporary painting aims to look hyperreal much current photography has the gestural appearance of painting. The old chestnut that the camera never lies is stood on its head by Ruff's work. "A photo journalist has to be really honest. The artist does not", he says. "The difference between my predecessors and me is that they believed to have captured reality and I believe to have created a picture."
Ruff has been taking photographs for more than thirty years and is one of those responsible for photography's enhanced status; its shift from the twilight zone of the art world to high priced commodity. His studies at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in the 1970s coincided with the political terrorism waged by the anarchic Red Army Faction and his ensuing Portraits made during this period reflect a preoccupation with surveillance. It is as if his subjects had been shot by Big Brother's camera. No emotion is shown, no flicker of a thought is revealed.
Tagged 3D, astronomy, Courbet, Gagosian Gallery, Gerhard Richter, John Collier, Jpeg, photography, Thomas RuffLeave a comment
Receive 3QD Posts by Email
All of the day's posts are sent out just after midnight (NYC time) every night. This service is free of charge for everyone. If you are a subscriber to the old 3QD Feedblitz email, you should sign up below NOW to get this new one, which is ads-free, and then cancel the old one by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any of the old 3QD emails from Feedblitz.
Search 3QD
Follow 3QD on Social Media
What People Say About 3QD
"Just wanted you to know I'm one of many who reads and enjoys 3 Quarks....almost daily."
—David Byrne, musician, former lead-singer of the Talking Heads, artist, intellectual.
"3 Quarks Daily is a warm and often amusing home for intellectuals and other wags."
—Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer.
"It is a great honor to be mentioned in one of my two ONLY portals to the internet—and the world, since I do not read newspapers. My discipline, to avoid drowning in information, is not to cruise the web outside of these two points. I tried many sites; yours has CHARM."
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. [The other site NNT is referring to is the excellent Arts & Letters Daily.]
"I'm a big admirer of 3 Quarks Daily!"
—William Dalrymple, award winning historian and travel writer, as well as distinguished broadcaster, critic, art historian, foreign correspondent and founder and co-director of Asia's largest literary festival.
"The cross-disciplinary curatorial website 3 Quarks Daily represents a pocket of humanity in an increasingly amoral, algorithmic internet."
—Thomas Manuel, playwright, in The Wire.
"I've recommended your site to a number of friends and colleagues who've bemoaned the dearth of sites with any literary/scientific muscularity. Keep up the wonderful work."
—John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University, and bestselling author of Innumeracy
"3 Quarks Daily is a great website which should be supported!"
—Ned Block, Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science at NYU; former chair of the philosophy program at MIT.
3 Quarks Daily is an essential stop for any serious reader on the Web."
—Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.
"From my perspective as an early modernist, what you're undertaking is akin to the heroic labors of Renaissance compositors, who would (like you) read widely and excerpt and synthesize vast amounts of knowledge for others. A real service to the republic of letters."
—Scott Newstok, Professor of English, Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, Rhodes College, and author of How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education.
"3 Quarks Daily is terrific - many congratulations, and many thanks!"
—Alain de Botton, best-selling Swiss-British writer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
"3 Quarks Daily is one of the most interesting and thoughtful websites out there."
—Sean Carroll, physicist at Caltech, author.
"Mighty interesting website! I've added it to my favorites."
—Daniel Dennett, University Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University.
"I couldn't tear myself away from 3 Quarks Daily, to the point of neglecting my work. Congratulations on this superb site."
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.
"You guys rock!"
—Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic, author of five books, überblogger.
"3 Quarks Daily is first rate."
—Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Chair in Philosophy and Director of the South Asian Institute at Columbia University.
"3QD is always interesting--you (and your other contributors) have a fine eye for good writing in both the arts and the sciences, which is a very rare thing indeed."
—Rochelle Gurstein, author of The Repeal of Reticence, and frequent contributor to The New Republic, Salmagundi, and American Scholar.
"3 Quarks is a daily must-read for intellectuals of all stripes. It is perhaps even smarter and better and more comprehensive than Arts & Letters Daily, the de facto gold standard of the smart set on the internet."
—Laura Claridge, former Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, and author of Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, and Norman Rockwell: A Life.
"For sheer elegance, wit and worldly wisdom when it comes to reading, editing, presenting the real news of the world... for liveliness, cosmopolitanism, range of scientific, philosophical, and literary curiosity in harvesting big and provocative ideas... for consistency of character and manners, ever above the ordinary... 3 Quarks stands alone. If 3 Quarks Daily were a person, wouldn't it be Proust?"
—Christopher Lydon, host of the excellent show "Open Source" on National Public Radio, author, media personality.
"3 Quarks Daily is one of the most interesting aggregator blogs out there. It puts together stuff from art, science, philosophy, politics, literature. It's a completely international, cosmopolitan place to get information. It's become my entry point to reading on the Web."
—Mohsin Hamid, author of Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, in the New York Times.
"I look for relevant research, interesting themes and funny stories on sites like 3 Quarks Daily, Crooked Timber, Boing Boing and Slashdot."
—Clay Shirky, prominent thinker on the Internet and its social and economic consequences, and author of Here Comes Everybody, in The Atlantic.
"I look at your site every day. It's where the two cultures meet."
—Suketu Mehta, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Maximum City, winner of the O. Henry Prize, and frequent contributor to various newspapers and magazines.
"Thanks for 3 Quarks Daily which has been very high on my reading list for several years now!"
—Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He is also co-founder, with Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn, of a project to establish a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
"3 Quarks Daily is smart and highclass."
—Robert Pinsky, only three-term U.S. Poet Laureate.
"I like to check in from time to time with 3 Quarks Daily."
—Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. "One of the most celebrated writers of his generation," according to the Virginia Quarterly Review.
"I have placed 3 Quarks Daily at the head of my list of web bookmarks."
—Richard Dawkins, previously Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
Recent Comments on 3QD
Ofinfinitejest . An immensely powerful and brilliant song about the Holocaust (shockingly, its lyrics could now apply to America's abuse and caging of children and...
Neil Peart (1952 – 2020) · Saturday, January 18, 2020
Tove K Scruton's concept of Christian "irony" is really just self-serving cynicism and hypocrisy. It's ironic that someone who promoted himself as a...
Forgiveness and Irony · Friday, January 17, 2020
CASEY HOMER Thanks Gretta and George
Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot have made a short film on the climate crisis · Friday, January 17, 2020
Tove K Easier to "bounce back" from the loss of 58,000 lives than from the loss of over 3 million, I guess.
Robert Reich: Why I'm Still Hopeful About America · Friday, January 17, 2020
Ashutosh Jogalekar All great reasons for being optimistic, to which I will add another: for the second time, the deep budget cuts to science funding proposed by Trump...
S. Abbas Raza Interesting and, of course, disappointing. I had no idea about this side of him.
Stephen K. Mack Scruton was corrupt! Don't celebrate the corrupt!...
Michael Liss If you are interested in an extremely detailed look at privilege and testimony issues in the impeachment trial, Jonathan Schaub has posted this on...
An Utterly Biased Guide To Impeachment · Thursday, January 16, 2020
Gord O'Mitey Thank you, Emrys. That is quite an anti-war song.
Lili Marleen: the poem and the song · Tuesday, January 14, 2020
S. Abbas Raza Thank you! :-)
Monday Photo · Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Bill Benzon American Association of University Professors.
With Friends Like These: Against the AAUP "Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education" · Tuesday, January 14, 2020
bobg Duh, what does AAUP stand for?
Fred Runkel Beautifully moody & evocative: The promise and the apprehension of a road to somewhere.
Emrys Thanks.
MWnyc Emrys, you may want to fix the typo in the original title of the poem as you gave it in the third paragraph. It should be "Das Lied eines jungen...
The Public Professor All meaning is manufactured. So it's not that people's lives are empty. Rather, they are full of meanings that they either inherit from other...
Stuck, Ch. 9. Fame and Oblivion: Big Star, "My Life is Right" · Monday, January 13, 2020
Tinky "A breath of fresh air" is right, Azra. Dr. Fojo was remarkable not only in his final response, emphasizing that palliative care is often a better...
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 24: Antonio "Tito" Fojo · Monday, January 13, 2020
brianwhit Who is responsible? Less important than how do we stop it? I submit the human species is solely responsible, like an original sin. I would suggest...
Omnicide: Who is responsible for the gravest of all crimes? · Monday, January 13, 2020
Pat moore Can't respond to reply.. Sent from my iPad
What Makes Manners Matter? · Monday, January 13, 2020
Azra Raza Beautiful Ga!! Well done...
Perceptions · Monday, January 13, 2020
David Chisholm That's gonna be my desktop wallpaper tomorrow.
Monday Photo · Monday, January 13, 2020
Ofinfinitejest . For those who don't know, and for whom it is now too late, to experience Peart playing the drums live in concert, to hear the sounds he created in...
Neil Peart (1952 – 2020) · Monday, January 13, 2020
S. Abbas Raza I can't quite figure out how this photo works, Ga, but it's very cool. :-)
Gord O'Mitey Yes, if he retains the power to take the lives of others, without going through due process. As recently happened.
Michael Liss Douthat is always interesting. But it's not just the people we don't inspire, it's also those who just cannot risk taking the chance. :...
The Academic Apocalypse · Sunday, January 12, 2020
Sumiran "The answer was that a frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys. Its tragic implication lies in...
The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton's masterpiece · Sunday, January 12, 2020
Tove K The Heartland Institute is becoming more and more desperate, and increasingly outrageous and ridiculous in the process, claiming that the Pope has...
Omnicide: Who is responsible for the gravest of all crimes? · Sunday, January 12, 2020
Ofinfinitejest . I am in agony over the death of Neil Peart, but this podcast--about as interesting as any you could ever listen to--is a breath of fresh rational air...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape Podcast: Daniel Dennett on Minds, Patterns, and the Scientific Image · Saturday, January 11, 2020
brianwhit There is a great deal of money, many billions, involved in dividing us, in the US 2016 elections, and in Korea. FB and others are for sale, and the...
It's the network, stupid: Study offers fresh insight into why we're so divided · Saturday, January 11, 2020
saba hasan actually the author gets fuzzy in his last paragraph because india is very much a majoritarian country and that is why despite gujarat 2002 ,the beef...
Arjun Appadurai: Three Observations From India's Past to Contextualise the Present Struggle · Saturday, January 11, 2020
3QD Design History and Credits
The original site was designed by S. Abbas Raza in 2004 but soon completely redesigned by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis in 2006. The next major revision was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde in 2013. And this current version 5.0 has been designed and deployed by Dumky de Wilde in collaboration with S. Abbas Raza.
3 Quarks Daily started in 2004 with the idea of creating a curated retreat for everything intellectual on the web. No clickbait, no fake news, not just entertainment, but depth and breadth —something increasingly hard to find on the internet today. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation.