Gerhard Richter Portraits

Richter's non programmatic style has itself become a style, with the portraits currently on show summing up but one particular aspect of his career: the blurred snapshot writ large. Even post-Photoshop, they don't disappoint. Long before the now familiar pixellating of images, Richter dragged his brushwork to gently distort figures and faces into freeze-framed pauses, spectral presences at once on the move and yet planted back in black-and-white time somewhere. (OW)