the potential of a body.

...on anselm kiefer's show at SFMOMA in October of 2006.



Underneath material corrosion and decay, there is a more confident search for what can be renewed. The recent exhibit at SFMOMA of Anselm Kiefer’s work, presents an intense look at almost 40 years of his singular creations, working within the realms of painting, sculpture, book forms and metaphysical exploration. Born into a fractured German post-war body, Kiefer’s work directly portrays an active struggle between repairing a broken national identity and creating a personal mythic history, while retaining the notable histories of his past. The layers of material corrosion in Kiefer’s paintings are reminiscent of a familiar setting in the post-war German landscape, yet there is something unfamiliar occupying the same space in the active eye of the outsider. Laying down physical mounds of paint and dead pieces of tree matter in his painting Des Herbstest Runengestpinst – fur Paul Celan, Kiefer is exposing the landscape as a setting for the decay of the living, whether it be human or other.
There is a definite theme that passes through the monumental canvases hovering in the white-walled rooms of the museum. The largescale depictions of such emotive landscapes, exposes Kiefer’s internal dialogue with his cultural past. Kiefer paints himself into these landscapes many times, mostly lying down in the midst of a post-apocalyptic vision, but as a stationary receptacle. In physically placing himself inside the works, Kiefer is “working through [German] history. [He has] to inhabit it to overcome it”. Even the glass vitrines (which seem to mimic Beuys’ use of the same object) that house Kiefers’ decomposing books, are suggestive of life-sized glass coffins that directly relate to the shape of the body and the cycles of life. In thinking about Kiefer’s work in terms of the body, “it is true that everything symbolizes the body, so it is equally true (and all the more so for that reason) that the body symbolizes everything else.”
Throughout every medium that Kiefer works in, there is a consistent heaviness. Whether it is the physical weight of the lead pages in his books, the visual density of his color palette, the violent Turner-esque landscapes, and the loaded metaphors used to reconstruct what had been destroyed. The horizon line is almost always painted above the head of an onlooker, creating an intense environment that is all encompassing. To enter a Kiefer painting, is to be consumed by an apprehensive darkness, giving one the sense that there is no escape. The question then arises of whether or not Kiefer is able to escape his own past by recreating such a landscape, in which it is seemingly possible to become trapped.
Kiefer’s reconstruction is one of a personal matter, in relaying a spiritual communication between the mind, the heart, and the hand. Many post-war German artists, in problematizing the issues of the body, referred back to German romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich. One could draw connections between Friedrich and Kiefer in their expressions of a religious mysticism and national symbolism, but also through the idea that “the painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself.”
The concept of narrative has a strong presence in Kiefer’s work as well. Not only does his work express the conflicted stories of his past, but there is also a more prominent narrative language that is adapted over time. Painted over many of his ominous environments is a somewhat inconspicuous German text. This non-abrasive use of text in his paintings is peculiar. It does not really serve as an extended narrative to anyone but Kiefer. In a way, his use of text in paintings, as well as his use of book forms that are void of text, are examples of how a written history of a German past has become splintered. German post-war history is indeed history, and what is more compelling is Kiefer’s own creation of a personal and mythic backdrop for his own present. The artist has said, “history has shown us that there is always a darkness inside the light...Maybe we should be looking more carefully in the darkness.”
Most recently, the art world seems to be partially dominated by a relational aesthetic, in which the artist is no longer at the center. Without the singular creator, Kiefer’s work would not exist. If anything, his work exists for himself, yet through its highly personal content, it relates to a larger body of people in a contemporary society. Without material, there is only one thing. There is the internal struggle within the human, be it the individual or social body, “researching about who we are in this universe”.