September

Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) is one of the most influential artists at work today. His painting September, a response to the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was made some four years after the event. The eminent American critic and curator Robert Storr, who has had a long working relationship with Richter, explores both the painting and the event itself, through a very personal account of his experience in New York on the day of the attacks. Storr shows, both through words and comparative illustrations, how this painting is part of a current running throughout Richter's career of responses to traumatic, violent, and controversial events, including works based on the bombing of cities in World War II and the capture of the West German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group.