The Dialectic of Truth and Appearance in Lacan’s Reading of Gerhard Richter’s Overpainted-from-photographs

One of the most important contemporary theoretical approaches that can be used to analyze works of art is the theories of Jacques Lacan (1901-1980), a French post-structuralist psychoanalyst. By combining psychoanalysis, philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology, he analyzes the world of the human subject’s mind in a series of intertwined and extensive cultural and social relationships.This article aims to take a look at the painting-from-phtographs of the Gerhard Richter Foundation as a unique collection of contemporary artists from a psychoanalytic point of view; And to ask the question, what is the relationship between truth and appearance in Richter’s painting and Lacanian psychoanalysis? Also, how Lacan’s psychoanalytic concepts are found to be helpful in the critique of Richter’s painting? The method used is descriptive-analytical and based on data and information using library and Internet resources, based on the observation of Richter artifacts and their analysis with Lacan’s psychoanalytic approach. This article shows that Lacanian concepts can be generalized to Richter’s paintings. There is no definitive truth and reality is perceived through the eyes and the organized system according to past experiences, the lack and desire of the subject. All of our reference points, everything we talk about and whatever we do through them, are all not absolute truth but stereotypes.