"Gerhard Richter Painting" shows, of course, the artist painting in his cavernous studio. It also shows him working with curators to hang his work for a show, taking questions from the press, discussing art with his friend, art historian Benjamin Buchloh, and talking with an off-screen presence, presumably director Corinna Belz.To me, Richter's internal processes remain enigmatic. Belz asks him when he knows a work is finished. Richter replies (and I am paraphrasing from memory here) that it is when there is nothing more that can make it better. Belz: How do you know? R: When it is good. B: Can we go a little deeper -- what is "good"? R: That's difficult. The artist has to see that, and the viewer too.A good answer, and probably accurate. A feeling for visual aesthetic may be, to a large extent, non-verbal. The critic Clement Greenberg wrote something similar: If you have a developed aesthetic sense, you just know when a painting is good. You just know.After a question-and-answer session with the press (presumably just before a major show), Belz asks Richter how he feels about his fame. Richter looks a bit reticent, then says that, well, it's all part of the thing, isn't it. At another point, working in his studio, he looks into the camera and says, I don't like the camera. It makes we walk differently. Clearly his personality has interior depths, and he is reluctant to reveal himself, or unsure how to express himself in that way.At another time, he says that we do art in private, it is a private act, but then we have to put it on display. I get the feeling that, for Richter, that exposing of the private act may be uncomfortable -- but, as with the press conferences, it is "part of the thing".The conversation with art historian Buchloh is excerpted in the main part of the film, but the full 23-minute conversation is shown in the special features. The conversation is easy and confiding, clearly between two men of an age who have known and respected each other for years. The two men discuss the paintings Richter has hung in the office of his studio, and to me this was a highlight of the film. That conversation is, tangentially, part of an answer to the question "What makes it good".I wished the film had touched more on Richter's earlier work -- his photorealistic paintings, his use of enlarged photos partially covered by abstracts. But perhaps the en media res quality of the film, the feeling of seeing Richter in the moment, without narration, without external explanation or analysis, is the best way to address the unanswerable question, What makes a "painting"? When is a work of art "good"?