Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Kiefer Painted Big

Anselm Kiefer was born on March 8, 1945, in Donaueschingen, Germany, during the final days of the collapse of the Third Reich. Being a boy growing up in postwar Germany, he would then use these feelings and influences of the German burden of the Nazi legacy in his work. As a young man, he studied French and law, but then persued art as an academic study in Freiburg in the late 1960’s. He is well-known for a favorite technique of pouring a blob of melted lead onto an ashen canvas to heighten suggestions of incineration, and in making works in attempt to process the past, he has been liked to the movement called New Symbolism.
One of Kiefer’s most controversial of works is a series called Occupations, in which he portrayed himself dressed in a military uniform giving the Nazi salute. It was unsure whether Kiefer was alluding to the past with nostalgia or satirizing dreams for the Nazi empire. Kiefer says, “I do not identify with Nero or Hitler, but I have to reenact what they did just a little bit in order to understand the madness. That is why I make these attempts to become a fascist.” Occupations signaled Kiefer’s endeavor to use his vocation as an artist to explore his own identity and heritage, which is prevalent in most of his works.



Winter Landscape, 1970
Watercolor on paper, 16 15/16 x 14 3/16"

Heroic Symbols, 1969
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 6 1/2 x 6 3/8"


Heroic Symbols, 1969
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 22 x 16 1/2"

Kiefer’s early watercolors were an exploration of his identity, and a representation of his own human suffering and loneliness. Heroic Symbols consists of a self-portrait of Keifer giving the Nazi salute pasted on the same sheet as an image of the sky “wounded by shots.” Winter Landscape depicts a human head over a winter scene stained in blood. It was meant to represent the land stained by events in human history, perhaps also portraying Keifer’s painful personal guilt.

Father, Son, Holy Ghost, 1973
Oil and Charcoal on burlap, 114 x 74 3/4"
Ressurexit, 1973
Oil, acrylic, and charcoal on burlap, 114 3/16 x 70 7/8"
In 1972 and 1973, Keifer then started moving away from forest themes to taking up the physical surrounding of his studio as a motif. In Father, Son, Holy Ghost, He uses the structure of the attic or schoolhouse. The burning chairs are meant to represent the holy trinity. The spaces depicted in works such as are very psychologically charged and are a metaphor for the artist’s mind, where “conflict and contradiction are resolved through creation.”
Kiefer studied with Joseph Beuys in the 1970’s, and from him he learned the art of transforming materials such as straw, clay, lead, and shellac. Beuys also influenced Kiefer’s desire to create a dialogue with history and to employ myths, metaphors, and symbols as a means to engage and understand.
Your Golden Hair, Margarete, 1981
Oil, Emulsion, and Straw on Canvas, 51 3/16 x 67"

Margarete, 1981

Oil and Straw on Canvas, 110 x 149 5/8"

Shulamite, 1983
Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, straw on canvas with woodcut, 114 3/16 x 145 11/16


Interior, 1981
Oil, acrylic, emulsion, straw, and shellac on canvas with woodcut, 113 x 122 7/16"

Kiefer also was very much influenced by Paul Celan’s writing, in terms of displaying German history and the horrors of the Holocaust. Celan’s “Death Fuge,” written in a Concentration Camp, was an influence for Kiefer’s work in the 1980’s, such as Margaret, Your Golden Hair, Margaret, and Shulamite. He would also write the titles large across the canvases in paintings such as these. The poem talks about the contrast between the blonde hair of the Aryan Margarete, and the dark ashen hair of the Jewish Shulamite. In Your Golden Hair, Margarete, straw is used to symbolize the German love of the land, but also to show the Nazi blonde ideal as grotesque. These natural elements also show fragility, which is in contrast to the stark subject matter. Shulamite shows a hellish environment of a Nazi memorial hall, the environment that consumed the girl Shulamite. Kiefer uses fire, both literally with the use of ashes, and representationally, in many of his works, as a theme as a destructive and redemptive force. In Interior, Kiefer painted the Mosaic room in Hitler’s Chancellery which has been charred with smoke, representing a direct descendant of the burned landscapes depicted in works such as Your Golden Hair, Margarete.
Kiefer has been compared to Jackson Pollock, in that his mature works were painted in an expressive style on a large scale. Margarete has been compared to Pollock’s Blue Poles (1952) in terms of composition.


Jerusalem, 1986
Canvas (in two parts) with steel and lead, 150 x 220 1/2"

Kiefer was interested in alchemy, or the attempting to change base materials such as lead into gold. Kiefer believed that the artist was an alchemist, with the ability to use raw materials such as paint and canvas to create profound and monumental works. After a visit to Israel, he painted Jerusalem, which can be seen as a metaphor for the city itself in that physically the painting has gone through many stages of life. Kiefer explained that he first created a “landscape painting” then covered areas with hot lead and more paint. He then peeled of much of the lead several months later, taking away color and leaving patches. The effect is of “skin that has been violently torn away in a fetishistic or even maniacal activity.” Iron skis come from the canvas symbolizing the “New World,” with gold leaf depicting the cosmos.
Jerusalem, with its use of gold leaf and allusion to the celestial and mythic, showed that by the mid-1980’s, he moved away from specifically German subject matter to more universal themes, such as the mythological.

To the Unknown Painter, 1983

Oil, emulsion, woodcut, shellac, latex, and straw on canvas


"A complex critical engagement with history runs through Anselm Kiefer's work. His paintings as well as the sculptures of Georg Baselitz created an uproar at the 1980 Venice Biennale: the viewers had to decide whether the apparent Nazi motifs were meant ironically or whether the works were meant to convey actual fascist ideas. Kiefer worked with the conviction that art could heal a traumatized nation and a vexed, divided world. He created epic paintings on giant canvases that called up the history of German culture with the help of depictions of figures such as Richard Wagner or Goethe, thus continuing the historical tradition of painting as a medium of addressing the world. Only a few contemporary artists have such a pronounced sense of art's duty to engage the past and the ethical questions of the present, and are in the position to express the possibility of the absolution of guilt through human effort."

Zim Zum, 1990

Acrylic, oil emulsion, shellac, ashes, and canvas on lead

3 comments:

Callan Hetterich said...

What I sense the most when I look at Anselm Kiefer’s paintings is mood. Nearly all his paintings give me a cold and energetic feeling. I think I feel a cold mood because of Kiefer’s gray skies and cold colors. It is possible that I also get a colder vibe from the paintings since Kiefer’s subject matter usually involves Germany and post Nazi WWII. The mixture of hay, dirt, and paint, along with the thick solid color creates lively scenes for me. Many of Kiefer’s painting contrast lights and darks so well that I see depth from a scene that could be interpreted totally differently. An example of this is in his painting, “To the Unknown Painter.”

Mary M. said...

I find Kiefer's paintings darkly beautiful. When I think of desolate landscapes in real life, I feel emptiness. Looking at Kiefer's layers and layers of paint and lead and hey adds more depth and content to these images. I agree with Callan, it does make them more lively.

I was wondering what you guys thought about the base of this layering starting with a photograph (the "emulsion on canvas")or the works where the paint is not the primary medium used. Is it still a painting? Does it challenge the definition of painting for anyone else?

Unknown said...

Kiefer's paintings are fascinating to me. I can't imagine the guilt and indignance he must have grappled with, growing up post-war Germany. His depictions of concentration camps and the facist party reveal he indeed did struggle with how to swallow the horrors of his country's past. I agree that when surveying much of Kiefer's work I feel a cool chill, it's almost as though I can feel a stinging winter wind on my face. I also draw a connection to the dark hopeless imagery within Band of Brothers. Kiefer's exploration of different mediums to enhance his work such a lead, straw, and dirt give his paintings a gritty appeal.