"Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art" - Anselm Kiefer.
Blimey! Meet us halfway, Anselm. Chuck us a few clues. I don't mind doing a bit of work when it comes to getting to grips with art but it seems that's not enough for Anselm Kiefer. The difficulty in understanding his creations is almost the reason he creates them. But I think another reason he makes these huge brooding pieces is that he wants his art to be considered as IMPORTANT!
Die Lebenden und die Toten (2019)
Not just to be considered as important. But to be important. He's spoken of how his Calvinist upbringing has instilled in him a need for what he does to have purpose and he's hinted, more prismatically, of a desire to try to make sense, or order, from the chaos we are all born into.
Quasi-religious imagery, axes, a mostly monochrome palette, ominous German titles (to be fair, he is German), and the sheer size of his work. All of these things seem to be letting us know, none too subtly, that Anselm Kiefer is an important artist and that he has important things to say. Things that we, us mere viewers, probably won't possibly be able to comprehend or interpret.
It doesn't make for the most illuminating experience though it does make for a spectacle. It had me wondering if Kiefer's haughty quotations, giant canvases, and oh so dark and meaningful art wasn't, in some way, fooling us all. Anything this big, anything this revered, anything the artist speaks in such hi-falutin' tones about. Well, it must mean something. If we can't work out what then perhaps we're the idiots.
It doesn't make for the most illuminating experience though it does make for a spectacle. It had me wondering if Kiefer's haughty quotations, giant canvases, and oh so dark and meaningful art wasn't, in some way, fooling us all. Anything this big, anything this revered, anything the artist speaks in such hi-falutin' tones about. Well, it must mean something. If we can't work out what then perhaps we're the idiots.
Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot (2019)
Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot (2019)
Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot (2019)
The fact that Kiefer was born in Germany (in the small picturesque Black Forest town of Donaueschingen) exactly two months before the end of World War II (in Europe at least) adds further ballast to our critical appraisals and expectations of Kiefer as a meaningful artist, a man who has seen stuff, experienced things, and a man with a mission to truly understand what disturbs our human souls so that the dreadful death, murder, and mayhem that may lurk at the heart of us all may never be unleashed again.
The White Cube in Bermondsey's recent show of new work from Kiefer has been given the lengthy, and pompous, title Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot and, we're informed by a leaflet we can grab at the desk on the way in, it brings together many of the themes that have preoccupied Kiefer throughout his career.
Mythology, astronomy, history, and even mathematics. In the form of the incredibly confusing (it's said if you think you can understand it then you're not even close) string theory. String theory attempts to articulate the fundamental interactions of all matter in the universe and, at the White Cube, Kiefer seeks to do similar. To 'bring together theories of seemingly extraneous principles from difficult cultures and histories' so that ancient mythology and modern science can be shown not to be in conflict but, in fact, stem from the same place. He's trying to show there's a link between all things. A thread that runs from the beginning of time to now and on in to the future.
Superstrings (2018-19)
Superstrings (2018)
You can't fault his ambition, and I choose not to doubt his intention either. As you enter the White Cube you pass along a corridor flanked by thirty vitrines. Each of which is over four metres tall and is filled with masses of entwined and tangled tubing and stained and crumbling panels. The surfaces of the vitrines are marked with complex, incomprehensible to most laity, equations and the names of the three chief spinners (the Norns) of Norse mythology:- Urdi, Verdandi, and Skuld.
Confused much? It doesn't get a lot clearer when you venture into the White Cube's various side galleries. Confronted with Kiefer's paintings of 'barren scenes and rows of charred vegetation', occasionally with an old wooden axe lobbed in to the middle of them, where straw and twigs as much as paint are mined for their dramatic and even transcendent qualities, you are immediately impressed by both the sheer size of them as well as their sparse bleakness.
Which is fine. It's good to look at. But my knowledge of both string theory and Norse mythology is, much like most of us I suspect, rudimentary at best. I'd barely describe myself as a keen hobbyist in regards to either discipline so the odds of me being able to fully appreciate what Kiefer is saying, or trying to say, with these sometimes seven metre long behemoths is, quite frankly, beyond my ken.
Superstrings (2018-19)
Ramanujan Summation - 1/12 (2019)
Elsewhere, there are references to the legend of Phrygian Gordium and Alexander the Great, the runic alphabets that formed the basis for Germanic languages, panopticons, systems of maintaining power, and the Italian theoretical physicist Gabriele Veneziano. Veneziano was one of the pioneers of string theory and Alexander the Great solved the problem of untangling the Gordian knot by using his axe to cut through it. But that doesn't really make Kiefer's art, or this show, much clearer.
If anything it obscures it further. Almost as if that's the point. These are dark, obscure, and even obscurantist pieces. They boast of an arcane and esoteric knowledge yet they refuse to divulge exactly what that knowledge is. In this they lack generosity. They remind me of when friends tell you they know some great gossip but they simply can't share it with you because it's too juicy. Well in that case don't say anything. Otherwise you're just showing off. Or even lying.
If anything it obscures it further. Almost as if that's the point. These are dark, obscure, and even obscurantist pieces. They boast of an arcane and esoteric knowledge yet they refuse to divulge exactly what that knowledge is. In this they lack generosity. They remind me of when friends tell you they know some great gossip but they simply can't share it with you because it's too juicy. Well in that case don't say anything. Otherwise you're just showing off. Or even lying.
Der Gordische Knoten (2019)
Der Gordische Knoten (2019)
I'm being facetious (and intentionally bathetic), of course, and I think, if anything, Kiefer is showing off far more than he is lying. But here's the rub. Despite all the posturing and the self-aggrandisement I was still impressed. I was either lining up to buy the snake oil, to taste that Kool-Aid, or, somewhere deep inside of me, I am convinced that Kiefer's not a fraud. That he's on to something. That his difficult and important art is difficult and important because it needs to be and not just because it earns him praise and brings him money.
Had I been taken in by the titles, the pamphlet, and the scale of the event? I don't know for certain, and it seems unlikely I'll ever invest the time to find out. Life's too short and it seems to fully understand the meanings behind Kiefer's latest work I'd need to take a lengthy course in advanced theoretical phsyics at the Vienna University of Technology and read Hilda Ellis Davidson's Gods and Myths of Northern Europe in its entirety.
Right Wing, Left Wing (2019)
Der Gordische Knoten (2019)
The first of which borders on the impossible and the second of which I could do but is an unlikely priority for the near future (I've got bookshelves full of stuff I've barely skimmed). So, for this visit and for this summation, I must content myself with admiring Kiefer's work not for its mythological or scientific (or, indeed, its syncretic) meaning but purely for its aesthetic affects and its grand scale.
Der Gordische Knoten's axes look disturbing and horrific, other works recede into the distance as if to speak silently but powerfully about how war debases not just those who fight it but those who live in its shadow and even the environment in which it has taken place, and elsewhere the darkness in parts of his work is so intense, so foreboding, it seems that he is trying to warn us of ominous events foretold. Be they climate change disasters or conflicts enabled by short term thinking and nationalistic, populist ideologies.
Der Gordische Knoten's axes look disturbing and horrific, other works recede into the distance as if to speak silently but powerfully about how war debases not just those who fight it but those who live in its shadow and even the environment in which it has taken place, and elsewhere the darkness in parts of his work is so intense, so foreboding, it seems that he is trying to warn us of ominous events foretold. Be they climate change disasters or conflicts enabled by short term thinking and nationalistic, populist ideologies.
Der Gordische Knoten (2019)
String Action (2018)
The Veneziano Amplitude (2019)
String-Theorie (2018-19)
Die Seben Siegel, die geheime Offenbarung des Johannes (2016-18)
Not that Anselm Kiefer would ever make anything that spells that out so blatantly. The job of an artist is, of course, to ask questions rather than to answer them. I'm not sure if asking questions that are so hard to understand is a fault of Kiefer or is a fault of a society that doesn't allow us time to devote to further investigation and doesn't value curiosity as a tool to improve our planet and our lives.
I just know that's how it is. Anselm Kiefer's asking lots of interesting questions but we're merely standing in front of his paintings gawping at the size of them and taking photos of them. I was thinking about what an apocalypse might actually be like the other day. I expect there would be some raping and pillaging, a bit of murder, and even a few acts of unparalleled bravery and altruism. But, for the most part, I expect we'd be taking photos and sending them to each other on our phones. Maybe making jokes, and maybe that's the best thing we can do. Life can be terrifying and death even more so. Humour is required to help us survive it. There's nothing wrong with laughing. But, equally, there's nothing wrong with, like Anselm Kiefer, being deadly serious. Further thought required on this one.
Raum-Zeit (2019)
Vainamoinen sucht die drei fehlende Buchstaben (2018-19)
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