INTRODUCTION

Jerusalem, 1986

Acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and gold leaf on

canvas (in two parts), with steel and lead

Collection of Susan and Lewis Manilow,

Chicago

Kiefer poured molten lead over

the surface of this canvas and then

peeled much of the metal away.

Such a purging process suggests

renewal and transformation, as

does the application of gold leaf to

the scarred surface of this paint­ing, which concerns one of the

world's most symbol-laden cities.

Densely structured of diverse mate­

rials, Anselm K.iefer's images are both

striking and profound. He draws his

subject matter from myth, literature,

music, and history. While his investiga­

tions into the German past have caused

controversy, Kiefer does not idealize

his country, but rather mocks its pre­

tensions while reminding people that

the past cannot be erased.

Anselm Kiefer was born m 1945 in

southern Germany near the Black and

Oden Forests. As a young man he set­

tled in Freiburg, where he studied law

before turning to art in 1966. Kiefer's

mentor during the crucial period from

1971-73 was Joseph Beuys (1921-1986),

an artist who believed in the capacity of

art to transform society, and a teacher

whose ideas inspired European students.

- Early in his career, Kiefer chose narra­

tive imagery to convey his meaning.

After 1980, materials and subject matter

become intertwined. The German land­

scape, for example, is both subject and

quite literally medium. Straw, sand, lead,

photographs, charcoal, oil paint, and

burlap - sometimes torn or burned -

create textures that are at once sensually

engaging and immediate.

"I work with symbols which link our consciousness with the past. The symbols create a kind of simultaneous continuity and we recollect our origins."

Anselm Kiefer, 1980

THE GERMAN IDENTITY

Ways of Worldly Wisdom 1976-1977

Wege der Weltweisheit

Oil, acrylic, and shellac on burlap, mounted

on canvas

Sanders Collection, Amsterdam

This image, one of Kiefer's most

complex, is set against a dark forest

signifying the victory of the an­cient Germans over Roman invad­

ers at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (A.D. 9 ). Arminius (Her­

mann), whose name appears in

the center of the painting, was the

victorious general; he was later

immortalized as a symbol of Ger­

man nationalism.

Like many contemporary German

artists, Kiefer examines his cultural

heritage through subjects from Ger­

man history and literature. He does

not comment directly on contempo­

rary divided Germany, but usually por­

trays figures and events which predate

1945, the year of his birth and of the

end of World War II.

Many of Kiefer's images spring from

his meditations on the German experi ­

ence in World War II. Others allude to

famous philosophers and writers, lead­

ers and generals of the eighteenth,

nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

The several versions of The Ways of

Worldly Wisdom combine portraits of

great men and women, such as the

playwright Heinrich von Kleist (1777-

1811), the philosopher and theologian

-Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher

(1768-1834), the Queen of Prussia

Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1776-

1810), and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke

(1875-1926).

"What are they {the Germans} looking for? God? The absolute number? The mean­ing behind meaning? Insurance against nothingness? They want at last to know themselves... . Who are we? Where are we from? What makes us Germans? And what in God's name is Germany?"

Gunter Grass, Headbirths or The Germans are Dying Out, 1980

NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMANY

Shulamite, 198 3

Sulamith

Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and straw

on canvas, with woodcut

Saatchi Collection, London

In the house lives a man who

plays with vipers who writes

who writes when the night falls

to Germany your golden hair Margarete.

Your ashen hair Sulamith we

are digging a grave in the clouds where we will

not be crowded.

Paul Celan Excerpt from Death Fugue, 1945

Using National Socialist buildings

and German battlegrounds as settings,

Kiefer dismantles the propaganda of

the Nazi regime and emphasizes de­

struction and human suffering.

Shulamite depicts the interior of a

cavernous structure based on Nazi ar­

chitect Wilhelm Kreis's design for the

Funeral Hall of German Soldiers.

Kiefer has transformed the monument

into a memorial for all the victims of the

National Socialist regime by adding a

ceremonial fire. Fire as violent confla­

gration or eternal flame signifies both

destruction and survival.

Fire also appears in a series of works

Kiefer based on Auschwitz survivor

Paul Celan's poem, "Death Fugue" (a

quote appears at left) . The "golden

haired Margarete" becomes a metaphor

for the Aryan race, while the Jewish

Sulamith's burnt "ashen hair" sym­

bolizes the literal burning of the Jews.

"When I cite Richard Wagner, then I do not mean the composer of this or that opera. For me, it is more important that Wagner changed, if you will, from a revolutionary into a reactionary. I also mean the phenomenon - Wagner. The way in which he was used in the Third Reich ... "

Anselm Kiefer, 1978

KIEFER'S BOOKS

The Book, 1979-1985

Das Buch

Acrylic, emulsion, and shellac on canvas

(in two parts), with zinc and lead

Hirshhom Museum and Sculpture Garden,

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Thomas M. Evans, Jerome L. Greene,

Joseph H . Hirshhom, and Sydney and

Frances Lewis Purchase Fund

The lead book, set against a vast

field suggesting the infinite, stands

as a heroic image of human intel­

lectual achievement; life is short,

but the power of the mind endures.

Kiefer has created many works that

take the form of books. Recalling the

tradition of hand-illuminated manu­

scripts in medieval Germany, they af­

firm the importance of reading to

Kiefer's intellectual life.

These volumes are not based on writ­

ten texts, but are purely visual expres­

sions. They allow serial development of

a theme, with each folio conceived in

relation to the sequence of page open­

ings. Unlike the paintings, which are

unified visual statements, the books

must be studied in time, an act that in­

evitably stimulates closer examination

of Kiefer's ideas.

"I read. But it's not really reading. I immediately see everything I read in images."

Anselm Kiefer, 1986

THE POWER OF ART

Icarus- March Sand 1981

Ikarus- miirkischer Sand

Oil, emulsion, shellac, and sand on photo­

graph, mounted on canvas

Saatchi Collection, London

Trapped on the island of Crete, Icarus and his father, Daedalus,

fabricated wings of wax to escape.

When Icarus ignored his father's

warnings not to fly too close to the sun, he fell to his death.

Cover image:

Emanation, 1984-86

Oil, acrylic and emulsion on canvas

(in three parts) with lead

Collection of Celine and Heiner Bastian,

Berlin

he capacity of art to affect human

history is central to Anselm Kiefer's

philosophy. Using few references to

the present or future, he manipulates

literature, history, and materials to

create new visions of the past. Through

art, perhaps humankind can be

transformed.

In Icarus- March Sand, 1981, an image

of the artist's heroic purpose - a winged

palette - flies over a devastated land­

scape, even as Icarus fled his island

prison in the story from Greek mythol­

ogy. But can dreams of freedom be at­

tained? The subtitle, "March Sand,"

suggests not, for it recalls a marching

song used by the Nazis. In other im­

ages, the palette clings to a tree or land­

scape, as if to suggest the unification of

painting with nature.

"The palette is the art of painting. Everything else that you can see on the painting, such as the landscape, is eliminated by the palette .... What is at stake is the problem of art in general. Do you imitate an object or do you try to eliminate it?"

Anselm Kiefer, 197 8

LANDSCAPE

Cockchafer Fly, 1974

Maikiifer jlieg

Oil on burlap

Saatchi Collection, London

Kiefer's title for this ravaged

countryside refers to a nursery

rhyme:

Cockchafer fly, Father is in the war

Mother is in Pomerania

Pomerania is burnt up .

A familiar variant in English

would be:

Ladybug, ladybug

fly away home

Your house is on fire,

your children all gone.

Landscape is Kiefer's principal

image for investigating history and the

interaction between the spiritual and

earthly. German forests and fields are

metaphors for historical and literary

subjects.

Kiefer's earlier pictures, such as Man

in the Forest, 1971, depict figures in

naturalistic renderings of nature. Later

his landscapes include multiple view­

points, extremely high horizon lines,

and dense materials that induce feelings

of entrenchment and transcendence.

The products of the earth - straw, sand,

twigs - are sometimes even incorpo­

rated into the structure of the paintings.

In more recent work such as Emanation,

1984-1986 (cover), the relationship be­

tween land and sky, earth and heaven, is

often ambiguous.

"Scorched earth is a ... term used by the army .... When applied to painting, this does not mean that I want to illustrate a regular military operation, but that I wish to por­tray the present-day problems in the art of painting .... You can view it as the new be­ginning which each painting must make again, every time. Each artwork destroys the one that precedes it."

Anselm Kiefer, 1978

MYTH AND SPIRITUALITY

Isis and Osiris, 1986

Isis und Osiris

Acrylic, emulsion, crayon, and photograph

on cardboard, mounted on lead, with steel

and glass

Promised gift of Marion Stroud Swingle to

the Philadelphia Museum of Art

In ancient Egyptian mythology,

the story of Isis and Osiris repre­

sents rebirth and fertility. After

Osiris was dismembered by a

rival, his sister Isis reassembled

the parts of his body in a meta­

phoric act of fusion.

Kiefer is absorbed by the spiritual

nature of existence, attempting to find

salvation for humanity through myth­

ology, religion, and art. Contrasting

hope with despair, he studies the po­

tential for redemption.

The artist's sources range across

human history - from Egyptian myths

to Germanic epics. Yggdrasil, 1985, for

example, is based on the ancient legend

of a world tree that survives the threat

of destruction. Other images are from

the story of Siegfried and Brunhilde as

recorded in the thirteenth-century nar­

rative poem The Nibelungenlied and in

Richard Wagner's trilogy of operas

The Ring.

"I think a great deal about religion because science provides no answers."

Anselm Kiefer, 1984

Programs in conjunction with

Anselm Kiefer at The Art Institute

of Chicago, Morton Wing

AUDIO-VISUAL PROGRAM

Anselm Kiefer: Remembering

Continuous in Fullerton Hall

(15 minutes)

GALLERY TALKS AT 12:15

December 15 & 30 & January 7,

Morton Wing

LECTURES

January 20 at 12:15, Morton Hall

Tuesdays at 6:00, Fullerton Hall

December 8

Anselm Kiefer, Mark Rosenthal,

Curator of 20th-Century Paintings,

Philadelphia Museum of Art, and

Co-Curator of the exhibition

Sponsored by the Society for

Contemporary Art

December 1 S

Cons.cience and Catharsis in the

Work of Anselm Kiefer, George

Schneider, Associate Director,

Museum Education

Januaiy S

The Diachronic Landscape:

Nature, Myth, and History in the

Art of Anselm Kiefer, Charles

Werner Haxthausen, Associate Pro­

fessor, University of Minnesota

Januaiy 12

Anselm Kiefer, Peter Schjeldahl,

Contributing Editor, Art in America

Januaiy 19

Anselm Kiefer and the Image of

German History, Christopher With,

Acting Head, Department of Art

Information, The National Gallery

of Art, Washington, D.C.

Januaiy 26

Anselm Kiefer, Bazan Brock, Profes­

sor, University of Wuppertal, Federal

Republic of Germany

FILMS

Tuesdays and Saturdays at 3:00,

Price Auditorium

Januaiy 2-16

State of the Art: History

J anUa1)' 19-30

The Essential is Yet to Come:

Anselm Kiefer

Support for Professor Brock's lecrure and

the film program has come from the

Goethe Instirute Chicago.

SUBSCRIPTION SERIES

Anselm Kiefer: The Anatomy

of an Artist, January 8-29, or January

9-30, 11:00-12:00. Information , call

(312) 44 3-3 680.

The Art Institute of Chicago

December 5, 1987 - Januaty 31, 1988

Philadelphia Museum of Art

March I - May 1, 1988

The Museum of Contemporary

Art, Los Angeles

June 14 - September 11, 1988

Museum of Modern Art, New York

October 17, 1988 - Janua ry 3, 1989

This brochure has been prepared by Kent

Lydecker, M elinda Jepson, and Jane Clarke,

Museum Education, with assistance from

Nea l Benezra and Judith Cizek, 20th­

Cenru ry Painting and Sculprure, The Art

Instirute of Chicago. Design: Mary Grace

Quinlan, Graphic Services. Publication

has been made possible by a grant from

the Goethe Instirute Chicago, with the

support of the Foreign Office of the

Federal Republi c of Germany.

T he . ../nselm Kiefer exhibition was organized joint]~ · by

The Art Instin1te of C hicago and the Philadelph ia

Museum of Arr. This exhibition has been made possible

b}' gr.m es from FORD MOTOR COMP.'\..i''"Y

LAi'\l~A .... "'\1 FOLJNDATION with additiom1l support

from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Federal

Republ ic of Germany, L1:1fth;insa G erma n Airlines, and

the Federal Council on the Ans and the Humanities.

Support for all exhib itions at T he :\ rt Insti rute of

Chicago is provided, in pa rt, by th"e Jo hn D. and

Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Special Exh ibi tions

Grant.