In the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
When Brita and I went to the art museum on Monday, we spent most of our time in the exhibition "Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting". I hadn't heard of Richter before (just as I haven't heard of most contemporary artists at all); some of his paintings were based on photographs and looked photographic, others were totally abstract, and others were realistic but out of focus. Brita and I kept wondering if our vision might be failing us, but the effect turned out to be deliberate.
One of Richter's most famous paintings is Onkel Rudi, which depicts his Uncle Rudi in a Nazi uniform. (Notes in the exhibition said that this painting was based on a picture in a family photo album.) I looked at it for a long time. What's particularly disconcerting about it is that it really looks like a picture from a family photo album. Rudi doesn't look evil or genocidal or menacing at all. He looks happy, he looks proud, and he looks for all the world like somebody's uncle.
I'm used to seeing pictures of Nazis fighting (in the movies) and murdering people (in books about the Holocaust). I'm not used to seeing them in photo albums. The exhibition went on to note that Rudi had just recently been commissioned when the photograph was taken, and died just a few days later.
A lot of families have Nazis and other traditional villains in their recent family history; some have pictures in photo albums and others may have surreptiously, quietly censored those albums. I know from talking to a high school friend that it can be particularly painful if you know about it; after a few conversations with her, I understood why many families have tried to alter or expurgate the historical record, and why many more lie to their children about the details of what particular people did. "What did you do in the war?"
In that generation, my family members were victims of the Nazis, or refugees from the Nazis. Some of them were very virtuous, and others perhaps were not. But I can't help thinking that there must be some generation, past or future, in which my family members are the villains.
This is a small part of what you might think about when you look at Onkel Rudi.
