ANSELM KIEFER AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

ANSELM KIEFER AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

This is a summary of an article: Grappling with history’s dark angel – a review by Jonathan Jones of the exhibition of works by Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy, London from 27^th September to 14^th December 2014. 

The article was published in the Guardian newspaper on 23^rd September 2014.

Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy

Anselm Kiefer was born in Germany in 1945: his works are concerned with the terror of the 20^th Century. 

Kiefer’s works take in both beauty and horror: his purpose is to put the pleasure into perspective in the light of 20^th Century history. 

Nazi imagery is present in Kiefer’s works.  ‘He is not tasteful: he has resurrected the terrors of the 20^th Century in a shocking, pungent and explicit way’.   His aim is to provoke anger in order to dispel forgetfulness.

Kiefer’s very large painting ‘Ash Flower’ is done in a number of materials including ash, described by Jones as ‘death dust’.  The painting presents a ghostly structure – a Hitlerian neoclassical building.  One large sunflower occupies the 4 metres height of the painting: a symbol of hope among the ashes. 

Kiefer is compared with Jackson Pollock: he is the ‘most liberating painter since Pollock’.  Kiefer’s works, like Pollock’s ‘splash out into the world’.  Each of Kiefer’s works is a witness to the moment of the spontaneous making of each mark of the painting. 

A work by Kiefer may have been made over many years: the work shows the layers and surfaces that have accumulated over time.  In the same way, for Kiefer, history is not only his subject: it is also encapsulated in each painting. 

Kiefer has illustrated the poem Death Fugue by the poet Paul Celan, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.  This poem has inspired and permeated a number of Kiefer’s works.

Like Celan, Kiefer asks ‘whether culture and beauty can still mean anything after the Holocaust’. Jones concludes: ‘Only by dedicating his art to memory can an artist work with honour after Auschwitz’.