Arcy Douglass blogs about the exhibition Gerhard Richter: Seven Works at the Portland Art Museum, on view through September 9, 2012.

"The works are often monochromes, the most spectacular of which is Grau (Gray)… One gets the feeling that it is a painting made out of frustration. Maybe he wanted to make a painting that would be completely objective. Gray, being neither black nor white, is neutral, rational. It is also the type of thing that gets made when the language and history of painting are no longer able to tell us anything new, and the same forms and ideas are endlessly recycled. So Richter makes a painting that destroys everything that we are taught is essential about painting."