{"id":5463,"date":"2012-05-29T21:55:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T20:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/?p=5463"},"modified":"2012-05-29T21:55:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T20:55:54","slug":"i-want-to-believe-in-the-richter-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2012\/05\/i-want-to-believe-in-the-richter-code.html","title":{"rendered":"I Want To Believe (in the Richter Code)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The back of the loyalty card for my friendly local coffee chain is plugging Damien Hirst&#8217;s latest exhibition at the Tate, as if London isn&#8217;t sufficiently riddled with Hirsts for the well-caffeinated. Earlier this year Hirst&#8217;s dealer held simultaneous exhibitions around the world of his spot paintings, with Hirst goosing the punter&#8217;s interest in the mundane canvases by dropping <a href=\"http:\/\/greg.org\/archive\/2012\/01\/23\/the_hirst_code.html\">suggestions of a hidden message<\/a> encoded in the grids of coloured spots. Because Damien Hirst totally has a lot to say.<\/p>\n<p>Amateur. A real artist lets the mysteries and conspiracy theories accumulate around him or her, like an inverted pearl. I saw this in all the bookshops in Cologne:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/cookylamoo\/7297181804\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/blogpix\/richter_code01a.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"&quot;Der ber\u00fchmte Mann schaute auf die rote Tasse.&quot;\" width=\"410\" height=\"293\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5464\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter_code01a.jpg 410w, https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter_code01a-300x214.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Could someone have actually published a crime novel called <em>The Richter Code<\/em>, enthusiastically ripping of the title, perhaps even the premise, of The Da Vinci Code, basing their murder plot upon the premise of a secret message hidden in the supposedly-random coloured panes of Gerhard Richter&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gerhard-richter.com\/art\/paintings\/other\/detail.php?14890\">window for Cologne Cathedral<\/a>? <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.de\/Der-Richter-Code-Edgar-Franzmann\/dp\/3897058308\">Yes, yes, yes!<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>George Rubin, Cologne&#8217;s most ambitious journalist, learns in the investigation into a murder case of an encrypted message hidden in Richter&#8217;s window of Cologne Cathedral. Will the Cathedral really be destroyed on election day? Rubin does everything possible to decipher the &#8220;Richter-code&#8221; and prevent the disaster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I love the idea that an artwork barely five years old is already being put to work in mythmaking. Even more, I love the idea that an author has decided that Gerhard Richter is somehow involved in both a murder and <em>a plot to destroy the cathedral containing one of his most famous artworks<\/em>. It neatly combines Richter&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/greg.org\/archive\/2010\/02\/02\/one_of_4900_colours.html\">4900 Colours<\/a><\/em> and related works with his habit of <a href=\"http:\/\/greg.org\/archive\/2012\/05\/18\/an_intentionally_incomplete_inventory_of_pictures_richters_bilderverzeichnis.html\">destroying paintings as part of his ongoing artistic practise<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Not mention that the book is part of a publisher&#8217;s series called &#8220;K\u00f6ln Krimi&#8221;. You know your city&#8217;s made it when you can boast an entire literary sub-genre about your home town being a hotbed for ingenious serial killers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The back of the loyalty card for my friendly local coffee chain is plugging Damien Hirst&#8217;s latest exhibition at the Tate, as if London isn&#8217;t sufficiently riddled with Hirsts for the well-caffeinated. Earlier this year Hirst&#8217;s dealer held simultaneous exhibitions around the world of his spot paintings, with Hirst goosing the punter&#8217;s interest in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5463"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5468,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463\/revisions\/5468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}