On October 5, 2012, the German national newspaper "Die Welt" published its daily
issue but things looked . . .
different. Quieter. The sensations of the day,
forgotten as soon as they re read, were missing, replaced with an unprecedented
calm, extracted with care from the chaos of the contemporary.
That calm was
the work of Gerhard Richter, who had been granted control over "Die Welt" for th
at single day, taking over and imprinting all thirty pages of the newspaper with
his personal stamp: images from quiet moments amid unquiet times, the demotion
of politics from its primary position, the privileging of the private and person
al over the public, and, above all, artful, moving contrasts between sharpness a
nd softness. He had created an unprecedented work of mass art. Among the many pe
ople to praise the work was writer Alexander Kluge, who instantly began writing
stories to accompany Richter s images.
