Archives

Anselm Kiefer

Occupations
09.28.12 - 10.21.12
Exhibition — les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse

Anselm Kiefer
Occupations, photograph mounted on lead series (2011)
Collection Anselm Kiefer

Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012

Anselm Kiefer
Occupations, photograph mounted on lead series (2011)
Collection Anselm Kiefer

Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012

Anselm Kiefer
Occupations, photograph mounted on lead series (2011)
Collection Anselm Kiefer

Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012

Anselm Kiefer
Occupations, photograph mounted on lead series (2011)
Collection Anselm Kiefer

Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012

Born 1945 in Donaueschingen (Germany). Lives and works in Paris.  

 

Anselm Kiefer, one of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century, has also been one of the most controversial figures in his generation because of his long-standing concern with Germany’s Nazi past, his calculated appropriation of Kultur and the way it was made to serve barbarism, human abasement and extermination. Instead of listening to the sirens of postmodernism, Kiefer’s reflexive approach has produced a specific plastic form. More than descriptions – and in spite of the abundance of recognisable forms: the German forests, portraits of philosophers and politicians, military maps, views of battlefields, etc. – Kiefer’s works are agglomerations of signs and texts. They call for thoughtful interpretation rather than passive contemplation. Further broadening the scope of his vision, the artist interrogates the destiny of western culture, which he readily assesses in relation to non-rational symbolic systems such as the Kabala and the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. Anselm Kiefer is thus the only artist of the postmodern period – whose artists are known for their love of tradition and cultural heritage – to sustain a body of work that is at once trans-historical and “connective.” As Kiefer affirms, the past is in the present but the present is not in the past. The role of the present, therefore, is to precisely redefine the past through the prism of its heritage and assess what must be done with it in order not to repeat historical mistakes. Kiefer’s personal reappropriation and personal reconfiguration of History in his work stands as a “lesson” – a lesson in art and a history lesson, the two being closely bound up together. Which makes it one of the key parts of this exhibition in Toulouse.

Acknowledgment : José Alvarez