In Abstract Painting (849-2) it is clear that Richter’s approach to abstract painting emphasizes a process of alternate generation and destruction in which chance plays a vital role. Tension between this binary of construction and deconstruction imbues Abstract Painting (849-2) with a somewhat brusque, casual, and mechanical feel. Richter remarks, “Any thoughts on my part about the ‘construction’ of a picture are false, and if the execution works, this is only because I partly destroy it, because it works in spite of everything—by not jarring and by not looking the way I planned.”
