The works of German painter Anselm Kiefer explore the intersection of Germany's recent history and the artist's individual experiences. The myths and realities of Nazism meet personal iconography in works of roaring emotionality that blur the line between the symbolic and the real. His theory of the artist's work could serve as a definition of Postmodern allegory: "All of painting, but also literature and all that goes with it, is merely a process of going round and round something inexpressible, round a black hole or a crater whose center one cannot penetrate. And those things one seizes on as subject matter, they have merely the character of pebbles at the foot of the crater -- they mark out a circle which, one hopes, draws ever closer to the center."
Kiefer studied law and Romance languages before studying painting with Joseph Beuys. In 1969 he achieved notice with "Occupations," a photoseries that featured the artist giving the Nazi salute at symbolic locations in France, Italy, and Switzerland. Expressing the ambiguous experience of the innocent, postwar generation of Germans contending with the Nazi legacy of their fatherland, the moods of Kiefer's paintings shift from the enraptured to the trampled. In the spirit of the Romantics, Kiefer attempts to create elegies for Germany's tragic history, and in so doing asks his viewers to bury their hatreds and their differences. At the same time, the eclecticism of his work requires the viewer to be versed in such varied arenas as Norse mythology, Wagnerian opera, Nazi war plans, theological and biblical history, and alchemy.
The emotive quality of his work arises from the unique textures of his paintings; he applies paint thickly, impasto-style, then covers the canvases with organic materials such as earth, sand, straw, and hair. These dense incrustations close the space between the canvas and the observer, and visual experience becomes intimate. In "Margarethe" and "Shulamith" (1981-1983), the blue tones of the canvases are obscured by straw assembled in the shape of burning candles. The names of the two women in the titles are taken from poet Paul Celan's lamentation "Death Fugue," which mourns victims of the Holocaust. Kiefer's recent projects include artists' books, sculptures (for instance, jet fighters constructed from lead plates), and installations.
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