«Der Stoff, aus dem die Kunst entsteht»: The iconography of terrorism in Cecilie Løveid’s ekphrastic poem on Gerhard Richter’s October 18, 77 (1988)

The public consumption of reproduced visualizations of terrorism and its perpetrators seems to have changed radically over the last few decades. The media aesthetics and the vulgar iconography of terrorism seem to surround us, available at the cost of a few operations on our smartphones. How does earlier “iconic” acts of terrorism and iconic imagery of terrorists prefigure this change of matters?  In a close reading of Cecilie Løveid’s ekphrastic poem “Noen av 18. oktober-maleriene” [“Some of the October 18 paintings”] from her poetry collection Vandreutstillinger [“Wandering exhibitions”], these motifs are discussed in relation to her vision of Gerhard Richter’s photorealistic paintings of the Rote Armee Fraktion, more specifically his representations of female radical left activists and clandestine terrorists Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin. This article examines terrorism’s aestheticized gender politics, the profane beatification of notorious perpetrators, late capitalist consumerism of their images and the problematic of the artist’s partaking in such an aesthetic.The public consumption of reproduced visualizations of terrorism and its perpetrators seems to have changed radically over the last few decades. The media aesthetics and the vulgar iconography of terrorism seem to surround us, available at the cost of a few operations on our smartphones. How does earlier “iconic” acts of terrorism and iconic imagery of terrorists prefigure this change of matters?  In a close reading of Cecilie Løveid’s ekphrastic poem “Noen av 18. oktober-maleriene” [“Some of the October 18 paintings”] from her poetry collection Vandreutstillinger [“Wandering exhibitions”], these motifs are discussed in relation to her vision of Gerhard Richter’s photorealistic paintings of the Rote Armee Fraktion, more specifically his representations of female radical left activists and clandestine terrorists Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin. This article examines terrorism’s aestheticized gender politics, the profane beatification of notorious perpetrators, late capitalist consumerism of their images and the problematic of the artist’s partaking in such an aesthetic.The public consumption of reproduced visualizations of terrorism and its perpetrators seems to have changed radically over the last few decades. The media aesthetics and the vulgar iconography of terrorism seem to surround us, available at the cost of a few operations on our smartphones. How does earlier “iconic” acts of terrorism and iconic imagery of terrorists prefigure this change of matters?  In a close reading of Cecilie Løveid’s ekphrastic poem “Noen av 18. oktober-maleriene” [“Some of the October 18 paintings”] from her poetry collection Vandreutstillinger [“Wandering exhibitions”], these motifs are discussed in relation to her vision of Gerhard Richter’s photorealistic paintings of the Rote Armee Fraktion, more specifically his representations of female radical left activists and clandestine terrorists Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin. This article examines terrorism’s aestheticized gender politics, the profane beatification of notorious perpetrators, late capitalist consumerism of their images and the problematic of the artist’s partaking in such an aesthetic