Designed by Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, this artist's book was published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Gallery h, Hannover in 1966. The book comprises of biographies and exhibition indexes as well as private photographs staged by Richter and Polke, accompanied by text collages of Perry Rhodan novels, newspaper cuttings and artists' statements by both artists.

From the author's note to the 1980 Nova Scotia Press edition: "In the Summer of 1978 I took photographs of the surface of an oil sketch on canvas (78 x 52 cm, it had been previously exhibited in my exhibition "Pictures" at the Anna Leonowen's Gallery of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). The photographs were taken from various sides, from various angles, various distances, and under different light conditions.

The resulting 128 photographs were organized in two versions: one, the sequential order that is presented here under the covers of a book, and a second version which is presented in grid-form (128 details from a picture II, 1978, 127 x 400 cm, photographs on board, framed, Collection Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld)".

Upon exhibiting the Halifax drawings twenty years later, Richter reworked these photographs anew, resulting in this book in which the images are beautifully printed, and presented sequentially (one to a page, recto only).

This work contains 69 different details of the surface of one abstract painting, photographed head-on. At first glance the fragmented topography suggests that Richter followed a specific plan, but the search for fixed coordinates or a sequence of the details leads nowhere. Each fragment almost fills the entire page, followed by a blank page, lending order to disorder.

The artist's book Gerhard Richter. Eis shows photographs taken by Gerhard Richter on a trip to Greenland in 1972: snowy mountains, ice floes, the vastness of the sea laden with chunks of ice, unspoiled nature. Some of the motifs can be found in Richter’s subsequent work, e.g. Iceberg in Mist [CR: 496-1]. The photographs are juxtaposed with texts which are taken from the 1871 edition of the Brockhaus encyclopaedia and relate to Greenland.

The two covers are indicative of the book’s artistic design; inside, the texts have neither a beginning nor an end, and photographs and texts are partly printed upside down. It is noteworthy that the photographs and texts are always printed in the same size, 8.5 x 12.9 cm, an area which has sometimes been left blank.

The book affords the viewer the possibility to trace this subjective experience of Greenland’s ice in a visual way, completed by neutrally communicated knowledge from the encyclopaedia.
 

Gerhard Richter. Bücher is the first publication that exclusively addresses Gerhard Richter’s artist’s books. Starting with a brief introduction to the history of the genre, Dieter Schwarz proceeds to analyse Richter’s diverse publications, which don’t necessarily stand out with extravagant covers, but are versatile in dealing with different subjects and their presentation. The aspect of reproduction and the processing of graphical material, which plays a crucial role in Richter’s works in general, can also be found in most of his books. Schwarz adjudges Eis and Wald a special status, as they are not derived from image details like War Cut or Patterns, but consist of independent series of pictures.

In the interview with Richter, Hans Ulrich Obrist, who also collaborated with him on a number of books, discusses the artist’s books chronologically and raises detailed questions about the development and context of all of Richter’s publications. The interviewer talks to Richter about his ideals and guiding principles in painting. Obrist is mainly interested in the structure and arrangement of the books, which demonstrate a carefully conceived composition.

The artist's book War Cut, designed by Gerhard Richter focuses on Abstract Painting [CR: 648-2] of 1987, which is located at Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris.

In May 2002, Gerhard Richter took detailed photographs of the picture, in which dark colours dominate and whose rather rough appearance is striking.

Two years later, Richter takes the photographs up again for his book project War Cut. 216 close-up photographs are juxtaposed to 216 texts from the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung of 20th and 21th March 2003, the beginning of the Iraq War. Whereas Gerhard Richter assembles the pictures following aesthetical principles, the texts are mainly printed in their chronological order. The layout of the book follows a formal pattern: the photographs as well as the texts fill a space of 10 x 15 cm.

Gerhard Richter's artist's book Wald assembles 285 photographs that he has taken since 2005 in a deciduous forest close to Cologne. Almost all the photographs were taken during the autumn and winter months: the trees have dropped their leaves, and the terrain is often covered with dry foliage.

Gerhard Richter arranged the photographs into different types: photographs that focus on vertical tree trunks, on branches lying on the woodland’s ground, and on horizontally piled logs or on diagonally broken branches.

In contrast to the loose typology of the photographs, Gerhard Richter uses a random generator for the selection of the text. The text, deriving from Waldung - Magazin für Wald, Wandern, Wissen, No. 1/2006, a German magazine about forestry, becomes a senseless collage of words, which originally were connected to the topic forest within the magazine.
 

The catalogue Gerhard Richter. Bilder / Serien accompanies Gerhard Richter’s eponymous exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler. The show is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, a longstanding friend of Richter, and looks back at 60 years of the artist’s work. The exhibition focuses on work he created since the 1960s; namely, series, cycles and interior spaces. According to Obrist, too little attention has been devoted to this specific section of his oeuvre to date. Works exhibited in groups are juxtaposed with single pieces, which act as both counterpoints characteristic of Richter’s style, yet simultaneously illuminate the similarities between the different bodies of work.

Besides illustrations of the exhibited paintings, the catalogue also includes text contributions by Sam Keller, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Dieter Schwarz. The essays by Obrist and Schwarz primarily analyse Richter’s series. An interview between the curator and Richter reveals the background of the development of the series. Furthermore, the catalogue includes a letter by George Didi-Huberman, who shares his thoughts after a visit to the artist’s studio.