September

Painted in 2005, September is Gerhard Richter's deeply contemplative response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The work belongs to Richter's signature photo-painting practice, in which he renders photographic source material in oil paint and then deliberately smears and blurs the image with a squeegee or palette knife. Here, the source is one of the most seared images of that day: the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at the moment of impact, with smoke and fire billowing from the upper floors against a clear blue sky. By subjecting this iconic photograph to his blurring technique, Richter suspends the image between recognition and abstraction.

The painting's modest scale — just 52 by 72 centimeters — stands in stark contrast to the enormity of the catastrophe it depicts, lending the work an intimate, almost private quality. Richter waited four years before completing the piece, a delay that speaks to the difficulty of finding an adequate artistic response to such overwhelming trauma. The smeared surface destabilizes any single reading: what initially appears as a colorful abstraction resolves, upon closer inspection, into a scene of devastation. Now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, September is widely regarded as one of the most significant artistic engagements with the events of 9/11.