Gerhard Richter's gorgeous November series of happy accidents collected in new book

There’s always something interesting about artistic processes in which the creative cedes control, and especially so when that creative is a major art world figure like Gerhard Richter. A gorgeous new book presents his November series in its entirety, an intriguing series that came about when he was decanting some black Edding marker-pen ink. Some of it dripped onto nearby paper and he was fascinated by the patterns it made, not just on the top sheet but on those it soaked underneath as well.

Using benzene, acetone and black tushe he started experimenting with thinning his materials and manipulating the colours and patterns, culminating in the production of 54 works, comprising 27 individual sheets with mirror images on both sides. This was back in 2008 and, as he’s prone to doing, Richter put them aside, only revisiting them three years later. Now Heni Publshing has brought them together in this lovely collection, full of beguiling shapes and the quiet colour palette of the images’ namesake month.