New to DVD: Gerhard Richter Painting

“Painting under observation is worse than being in the hospital,” Gerhard Richter tells filmmaker Corinna Belz, shortly after she has installed herself and a small crew in his bright, clutter-free studio outside Cologne, Germany. Fortunately, the artist agreed to endure several months of scrutiny as he went about what he describes to Belz as “a secretive business”: painting a series of giant abstracts in the spring and summer of 2009. The result is Gerhard Richter Painting, a mesmerizing documentary that made its U.S.