On Richter’s monumental, enigmatic installation in a Baroque church

In this volume, the acclaimed German curator and author Dieter Schwarz (born 1953) chronicles in minute detail an impressive installation by Gerhard Richter (born 1932), from its genesis as a concept through various drafts to its completion. Foucault’s Pendulum, installed in the Baroque Dominican church in Munster, is made of a 105-pound reflective metal sphere hanging on a 94-foot wire above a graduated disk made of 380-million-year-old stone. Four panes of glass, enameled in grey on the back and reflective on the front, are mounted on the sides of the crossing in two pairs at a slight angle.

The book presents Richter’s installation as a Gesamtkunstwerk in which space and light, stillness and movement, architecture and reflected images, past and present, aesthetic experience and scientific research are brought into relation with each other.