Art: September - A History Painting by Gerhard Richter
By Robert Storr
Paperback, Tate Publishing, £14.99
The September 11 terror attacks cast a pall over the world and no event since the bombing of Hiroshima has had as much impact on the collective consciousness.
The terrible consequences, the fatal impact of clashing ideologies, and the incredible drama of the moment, captured on thousands of video cameras and mobile phones has defined the world we live in today.
Both for the people caught up in the catastrophe and those around the globe who looked on in horror as events unfolded, it has become a cultural benchmark with ramifications stretched far beyond the initial pain of the loss of nearly 3,000 souls.
On that fateful day one of the most important of today's artists, Gerhard Richter, had been flying to the States for the opening of his show at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Manhattan.
When the first plane hit the World Trade Centre at 8.45am Richter and his wife Sabine were in the air on a Lufthansa flight from Cologne heading for Newark airport. The plane was diverted and within days a shellshocked Richter had returned to Germany.
But the memories and the emotions of that day mulled over in his brain, until four years later he felt he had to address them.
In 2005 Richter sat down and painted September.
It is one painting. It is not a big painting (measuring 52cm by 72cm). And when it was done Richter never approached the subject again.
It shows the twin towers, blurred edifices, yet to fall but fading away in a swirl of smoke and floating debris.
Eminent American curator Robert Storr examines the work in detail in his book September - A History Painting by Gerhard Richter.
For him it is both an essay on the cultural significance of the painting and a cathartic examination of the events as he experienced them himself.
He begins: "September 11, 2001, was the first day of fall classes for my two daughters. My wife walked them to school at seven forty-five. I remained at home. Twenty minutes after I finished The New York Times and sat down to write, the windows next to my desk shuddered and I felt a distant concussion."
From his own personalised view of the disaster he considers the work, its value as a painting and as a historical document of the occasion.
Using comparative illustrations, precedents in modern art, literature and warfare Storr questions evocations of traumatic historical moments and examines the painting's place in Richter's body of work.
Storr writes of the title and image: "September states nothing... This is a figment rather than a record of history.
"Compared with what eyewitnesses can recall even with the passage of time and what video and photography have captured and preserved, Richter's version - or, better said, vision - of 9/11/01 is an eroded representation of a monument blown to smithereens, the ghost of a ghost."
The painting September now resides in New York's Museum of Modern Art.