Uncle Rudi

Extract from the poem by Kurt Drawert, 'objectivity', based on Richter's 'Uncle Rudi'

'And what if, at the bottom, there were nothing at all?


And what if, at the bottom, there were nothingness?


And what if it had nothing to do with Uncle Rudi?


And what if the painting 'Uncle Rudi' were not an image of Uncle Rudi?


Is the image "uncle Rudi' then an image of nothingness?


Who says that the photo of Uncle Rudi is an image of Uncle Rudi


And who says that Richter's painting is a photo of Uncle Rudi,


And who says that the photo of Uncle Rudi was nothing


That only Richter's painting is an image of Uncle Rudi,


Of his petty nullity, a laughing man in a uniform,


An image which shows everything.'

The image 'Uncle Rudi', paint on a photograph,blurs the boundary between photography and painting. In what class does the image fall? Because of its decent between the two descriptions, it's neither nor state, its unclear mixture, does it take on a kind of invalid state?

The uncertainties that the image holds are reiterated in Drawerts poem. There re questions of what lays beneath the surface, of a past, of what should be, should have been. They beg to bring something to ligt which are of a mystery.

Just as with this poem, it suggests that there is no subject at all but at the same time, by mentioning him so much completely surrenders to Uncle Rudi, asking for a history in which to give substance to the photo,the painting or both. He wants to look deeper.