“This was the main point!” Pepe Danquart responds when asked just how he was able to get up so close and personal with Daniel Richter, the subject of his new eponymously-named feature documentary, a world premiere in German Competition at DOK Leipzig.
Richter is a major figure in contemporary German art. His giant paintings sell for millions through the world’s major auction houses. Danquart films him in his studio hard at work, mixing colours, priming canvases, smearing and scraping on the paint.
“We have known each other for a long time,” Danquart continues. Their acquaintanceship dates back to the 1980s when Danquart was already a prolific filmmaker and the artist was part of the Hamburg squatting scene. “He was recognising the things I did. I saw what he did. We had great faith in each other. We became friends. When he moved to Berlin, we were neighbours.”
Richter asked Danquart to make the film. This was at a time when the artist had exhibitions in New York and LA. A major monograph about him and his work was due to be published. He was keen to open up on screen.
When Danquart was filming in the studio, crew numbers would be kept to a minimum. The documentary was made over a period of just under three years and the filmmakers were in the studio around 20 times.
Richter is a down to earth figure with no airs and graces. “You know, he has a great knowledge about painting, about the history of art. He knows a lot about politics. He reads regularly the newspapers. He has a certain approach to reality,” the director says of his subject’s intelligence and very wide frame of reference. Like every “good artist,” Richter is open-minded and ready to explore new ideas. His work is strongly influenced by what he encounters in everyday life.
Early in his career, Danquart made a film about his stepfather who was also a painter. He spent several years as a professor at the art school, ‘teaching young people art and filmmaking.” He therefore knows the art milieu well. He has made political documentaries (about Joschka Fischer, the left wing militant turned mainstream political leader), and sports films (such as Hell On Wheels, about riders in the Tour De France). His most recent film was about the visionary Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (Ahead of Me, The South). He therefore has a breadth of interests that matches that of his latest subject.
Danquart marvels at the way Richter was able to “handle the camera around him while he was working.” In spite of having the filmmakers nearby, the artist was still able to concentrate and to find “creative solutions” as he worked on his massive canvas.
“I am not making a biopic. I just wanted to of a film about…what is painting,” the director says of the intention behind the documentary. “The energy of his paintings is extraordinary. When he was [holding] the show in New York, even homeless people were coming in [to the gallery], saying ‘what is this!’”
Young artists look see Richter as an inspiration. Older critics respect him.
At the same time as showing us Richter at work, the documentary looks at the inner workings of the art business. There is footage of auctions at which the bidding creeps ever higher.
“I really think similarly to him,” Danquart says of the “strange world” in which museums and private collectors fight to acquire new work, and pay through the nose for it. “I am fully content that an artist should live by his work – and not go selling coffee in coffee shops to make his art. But on the other side, there are luxury yachts, oligarchs and super rich people. This is not the world I live in. I hate it in a way – but the world is like it is.”
Danquart recently held a special screening of t
he film for the artist. “He [Richter] was very nervous to see it,” says the filmmaker, but ultimately, “he was very happy with it.”
The documentary is now starting its festival run. The German release is set for late January.
“I like to do different kinds of work,” Danquart says of his own very varied and prolific career which encompasses both documentaries and dramatic shorts and features. “I am happy when I get surprised.” He tries not to repeat himself. His routine used to be making a new movie every two years while also working with students at the University of Fine Arts. Since August, he has become “emeritus,” which means the teaching has stopped. The filmmaking, though, is continuing at the same relentless pace.
It’s close to 30 years now since Danquart won an Oscar for his 1993 film Black Rider. How did that affect his career? He chuckles at the memory. “You can see my Oscar speech on the internet,” he volunteers. “In the long term, it helped my career but in the moment you receive it, it is like an internal explosion in the brain…I was there [for the Hollywood Oscar ceremony] to touch the lion once, to see this circus,” he says. “It’s something you never forget in your life – an explosion in the brain.”
And, yes, he had a little speech prepared in advance. “When you go into the auditorium, you want to win,” he notes about how the competitive juices began to flow. Not that he used his moment in the limelight to thank everybody he had ever met. “A short film needs a short speech. Thank you,” he said. “And then I was away…”
