Ten Texts on Painting 7: The Problem of Genius

Matt and Andrea present a live podcast from TACO! in Thamesmead, London. We look at the work of Anselm Kiefer and Gerhardt Richter, two artists who have achieved both critical and commercial success and are considered by many to be geniuses. Who decides which artists get to be geniuses? What happens to the way their work is written about? Is there something about painting as an art form that lends itself to the idea of the painter as genius?We read a profile of Anselm Kiefer by the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård from 2020, and a review of Benjamin Buchloh’s book on Gerhard Richter by the theorist and art historian Malcolm Bull from 2023.Download PDFs of the texts from dekersaint.com/badvibesclubBull, Malcom. ‘Squeegee Abstracts: Gerhard Richter’s Dialectic’. London Review of Books, 2023.Knausgaard, Karl Ove. ‘Into the Black Forest With the Greatest Living Artist’. Magazine. The New York Times, 12 February 2020.