At Walther König’s art bookstore in Köln, Germany, Walther and his son Franz greet us warmly. “You must be very pleased with the cover of the Richter catalogue for the Tate Modern exhibition,” Walther says to Garry, pointing to a book on the display table in front of us. Garry hasn’t seen it yet. The cover of Gerhard Richter: Panorama features a photo of Richter in Halifax. He is standing in the midst of a construction site on Barrington Street near the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), where Garry served as president for 23 years. Halifax City Hall and a high-rise office building loom in the background. Richter holds his painting Halifax—first exhibited at NSCAD’s Anna Leonowens Gallery—casually at his side. It was 1978 and the artist was at NSCAD teaching for the summer term. During his stay, he also produced 128 Details from a Picture (Halifax 1978) with the NSCAD Press. In this artist book, he photo-documents the painting we see him holding on the Tate catalogue cover.
Walther tells us that he meets with Richter regularly, since the artist is making many artist books now. He tells us too that it was in Halifax that Richter began his ongoing practice of making one drawing a day. Walther says Richter often speaks of Halifax in endearing terms. This past decade he made another, shorter trip to Halifax. It was on September 11, 2001, when his flight was diverted from New York and Richter—with his former NSCAD colleagues absent from town—stayed the night in a school gymnasium. This visit is documented in a photo that appears on the back flap of the Tate catalogue.
In London, we’re invited to the preview of the Richter show at Tate Modern by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, the art historian, critic and former editor of the NSCAD Press. In the exhibition, the original photographs from Richter’s 128 Details from a Picture fill an entire wall. Some of them will also appear in Garry’s forthcoming book, The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1968–1978. The publication is due out this spring from MIT Press.
This is an article from the Spring 2012 issue of Canadian Art. To read more from this issue, please visit its table of contents.
