"When you're 'a working tourist' in Vienna you see all these smells of the past and not all of them are disgusting." Hear why German painter Daniel Richter prefers Vienna - where he works as professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien - over Berlin.
Richter, who is based in Berlin, has been a professor at the art academy in Vienna since 2006, a "working tourist" of the Austrian capital. A crown jewel of the Austria-Hungarian empire, Vienna is a reminder of "the decadence of the monarchy, the derangement of mankind on a very high luxurious level," says Richter. But Vienna is not only home to glorious buildings and decadent pasts, it is also the city of the avant-gardes, of Klimt and Kokoschka, Einstein and Freud. In Richter's opinion "the grand history of culture is embedded in the people of Vienna, more so than the Weimar past is a part of the Berliners."
Daniel Richter (b. 1962) is a German painter whose strongly coloured, often slightly surreal paintings convey current events and art historical issues with an irreverent and energetic approach. A professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria, his work is widely exhibited, among others at Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Belgium, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany and Victoria Miro Gallery in London, UK. Richter's paintings can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and elsewhere.
Daniel Richter was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in his studio in Berlin, Germany, and at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in July 2016, in connection with the exhibition 'Lonely Old Slogans'.
Camera: Klaus Elmer & Rasmus Quistgaard
Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner
Edited by: Klaus Elmer
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2016
Supported by Nordea-fonden