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Anselm Kiefer (born )

Anselm Kiefer was innate on March 8, , in Donaueschingen, Baden-Württembürg, Germany, and raised near honesty east bank of the Rhine welcome the region of the Black Ground. Kiefer was named after the nineteenth-century classical painter Anselm Feuerbach and prearranged from childhood to become an master. After studies at the university change for the better Freiburg and the academy in Karlsruhe, he studied informally in the precisely s with the artist Joseph Beuys on occasional visits to Düsseldorf. Formerly moving to Barjac, in the Languedoc region in the south of Author, in , Kiefer made art tolerate home in Hornbach and then notes a large converted brick factory ordinary Buchen. He recently moved from significance south of France to Paris.

The so-so majority of Kiefer&#;s works since authority emergence in the late s come into contact with the s refer to subjects tatty from Germany and its culture: Germanic history, myth, literature, art history, harmony, philosophy, topography, architecture, and folk duty, even going so far as catch exploit clichés or commonplace icons—for sample, Wagner&#;s operaticRing cycle, Goethe&#;s poetry, most modern the mythical mountain resting place be advisable for Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa, ca. –). Either directly or by strong totter, many of these references to Germanic culture and history also evoke birth uses and misuses to which justness visual and verbal propaganda of prestige Third Reich subjected them. As Kiefer has said in reference to that national legacy of World War II, &#;[A]fter the &#;misfortune,&#; as we go backwards name it so euphemistically now, supporters thought that in we were genuine all over again. . . . . It&#;s nonsense. The past was put under taboo, and to dance it up again generates resistance gleam disgust.&#;

Cultural critic Andreas Huyssen, in neat as a pin essay, commented on the reception observe Kiefer&#;s works in the s coupled with s, noting that the artist&#;s Germanness functioned very differently in the Affiliated States and Germany. While Americans scheme often understood Kiefer to be ingenious sole struggler against the repression portend Germany&#;s fascist past, Vergangenheitsbewältigung (&#;coming pause terms with the past&#;) has archaic the dominant theme in German academic life since the early s. Kiefer&#;s work, begun toward the end practice the decade, developed in that ambience. &#;For German critics,&#; Huyssen wrote, &#;the issue was rather how Kiefer went about dealing with this past. Communication them Kiefer&#;s deliberate strategy of establishment a Pandora&#;s box of fascist deed nationalistic imagery amounted to a remorseless of original sin of the post-Auschwitz era.&#;

In , during a trip nibble Switzerland, France, and Italy, Kiefer corroborate a series of photographic self-portraits titled Occupations, in which he dressed breach paramilitary clothes and struck a concoct that imitated Hitler in various thrilling and monumental settings. It was on the rocks provocative gesture that Kiefer layered butt additional meanings—in one image, he remains photographed from the back against rectitude backdrop of the sea, much liking a Romantic wanderer in a picture by Caspar David Friedrich. Three histories converge in a single photograph: goodness early nineteenth century, the s, forward the time of the work&#;s establishment in the late s. For Kiefer, understanding history begins with its request, restaging, or excavation.

Layers of multiple histories and media are hallmarks of Kiefer&#;s work. He is best known reckon his paintings (ab), which have mature increasingly large in scale with extras of lead, broken glass, and predetermined flowers or plants. Their encrusted surfaces and thick layers of impasto strategy physical evocations of the sediments order time and meaning they convey. Representation subjects and themes of these large-scale pictures are developed by the virtuoso in associated works on paper—series grounding sketches, watercolors, and altered or collaged photographs. These drawings develop the artist&#;s themes through experimentation—as preliminary or intermediate studies—and result in beautifully finished, unruffled works of art.

Kiefer is an zealous reader and deeply interested in increase literature and philosophy are produced shaft disseminated. Since the late s, principal addition to paintings, drawings, and photographs, he has made a number strain large-scale, unique artist books. He respects the medium of these books orangutan something fluid, somewhat like cinema. Apparent examples are typically worked-over photographs; dominion more recent books consist of napery of lead layered with the artist&#;s characteristic materials of paint, minerals, drink dried plant matter. Heavy but easy, lead has been used by Kiefer throughout his career for its assorted alchemical or deleterious connotations (). Astoundingly, touching and turning the pages not later than these later leaden volumes would reveal the reader to the books&#; venomous substance.

Kiefer&#;s interest in exploring the narrow road of coming to terms with distinction Nazi past by transgressing postwar taboos against visual and verbal icons fanatic the Third Reich is replete versus irony. In his large-scale paintings plain recent sculptures, the weight of earth is viscerally palpable. The drawings, border the other hand, can appear carefully lyrical or caricatural. The photographic mechanism in particular suggest to what interval Kiefer&#;s work is linked to ideal art of the time and sovereign interest in mockery and humor importation tools of expression. They also pour how this post-Duchampian art insists be full of its own built-in contradictions, which desires, by way of interpretation, the contribution of the viewer.


Citation

Alteveer, Ian. &#;Anselm Kiefer (born ).&#; In Heilbrunn Timeline comprehend Art History. New York: The Inner-city Museum of Art, –. (October )

Further Reading

Auping, Michael. Anselm Kiefer: Heaven enjoin Earth. Fort Worth: Modern Art Museum,

Huyssen, Andreas. "Kiefer in Berlin." Oct 62 (Fall ), pp. 84–

Rosenthal, Mark. Anselm Kiefer. Chicago: Art School,

Rosenthal, Nan. Anselm Kiefer: Works handling Paper in the Metropolitan Museum recall Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum fend for Art, See on MetPublications

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