Raw umber is usually not the first color students reach for. On the palette, it can seem secondary, matte, subdued, without any obvious brilliance. It rarely draws attention to itself. And yet, its role is often decisive.

On the occasion of the retrospective devoted to him at the Fondation Vuitton, one thing becomes clear: looking at a work by Gerhard Richter is never a comfortable experience. At first, we think we recognize something. A photograph. A portrait. A landscape. Then something resists. The image does not fully give itself up. It confirms nothing. It stands there, slightly unstable, as if refusing to settle. That precise point is where Richter’s work begins.

Abstraction in art is neither an escape from reality nor an aesthetic whim. I am convinced that it represents one of the major adventures of modernity. Refusing to depict the visible does not mean refusing reality. Abstraction simply proposes to explore another layer of the real, in which rhythms, structures, and invisible forces organize the world.