Editing Anselm Kiefer (section)

==Work==
[[Image:Anselm Kieffer - 'Glaube , Hoffnung, Liebe'.JPG|thumb|right|''Faith, Hope, Love'' by Anselm Kiefer, [[Art Gallery of New South Wales]]]]

===Photography===
Kiefer began his career creating performances and documenting them in photographs titled ''Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder (Heroic Symbols)''.  Dressed in his father's [[Wehrmacht]] uniform, Kiefer mimicked the [[Nazi salute]] in various locations in France, Switzerland and Italy. He asked Germans to remember and to acknowledge the loss to their culture through the mad [[xenophobia]] of the [[Third Reich]]. In 1969, at Galerie am Kaiserplatz, [[Karlsruhe]], he presented his first single exhibition "Besetzungen (Occupations)" with a series of photographs of controversial political actions.<ref name =nyt>{{cite web| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/magazine/anselm-kiefer-art.html| title = Into the Black Forest with the Greatest Living Artist| author = Knausgaard, Karl Ove| date = 12 February 2020| access-date = 14 February 2020|newspaper = The New York Times}}</ref>

===Painting and sculpture===
Kiefer is best known for his paintings, which have grown increasingly large in scale with additions of lead, broken glass, and dried flowers or plants. This results in encrusted surfaces and thick layers of [[impasto]].<ref>{{cite book | title=Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |chapter=Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) | publisher=The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kief/hd_kief.htm | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref>

By 1970, while studying informally under [[Joseph Beuys]] at [[Kunstakademie Düsseldorf]],<ref>[http://www.gagosian.com/artists/anselm-kiefer/ Anselm Kiefer] [[Gagosian Gallery]].</ref> his stylistic leanings resembled [[Georg Baselitz]]'s approach. He worked with glass, straw, wood and plant parts. The use of these materials meant that his art works became temporary and fragile, as Kiefer himself was well aware; he also wanted to showcase the materials in such a way that they were not disguised and could be represented in their natural form. The fragility of his work contrasts with the stark subject matter in his paintings. This use of familiar materials to express ideas was influenced by Beuys, who used fat and carpet felt in his works. It is also typical of the [[Neo-expressionism|Neo-Expressionist]] style.<ref name="Lempesis 2023 q910">{{cite web | last=Lempesis | first=Dimitris | title=TRACES: Anselm Kiefer – dreamideamachine ART VIEW | website=dreamideamachine ART VIEW – Taking you to the most significant contemporary art exhibitions around the world | date=1 March 2023 | url=https://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=86318 | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref>

Kiefer returned to the area of his birthplace in 1971. In the years that followed, he incorporated German mythology in particular in his work, and in the next decade he studied the [[Kabbalah]], as well as [[Hermetic Qabalah|Qabalists]] like Robert Fludd.<ref name="Rumelin"/> He went on extended journeys throughout Europe, the US and the Middle East; the latter two journeys further influenced his work. Besides paintings, Kiefer created sculptures, watercolors, photographs, and woodcuts, using woodcuts in particular to create a repertoire of figures he could reuse repeatedly in all media over the next decades, lending his work its knotty thematic coherence.<ref name=Rumelin>Rümelin, Christian. "Anselm Kiefer: Rolling on the River Rhine," ''Art in Print'' Vol. 8 No. 1 (May–June 2018).</ref>

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Kiefer made numerous paintings, watercolors, woodcuts, and books on themes interpreted by [[Richard Wagner]] in his four-opera cycle [[Der Ring des Nibelungen]] (The Ring of the Nibelung).<ref>http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1995.14.14 Anselm Kiefer, ''My Father Pledged Me a Sword'' (1974–75), [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]], New York</ref>

In the early 1980s, he created more than thirty paintings, painted photographs, and watercolors that refer in their titles and inscriptions to the Romanian Jewish writer [[Paul Celan]]'s poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").<ref>http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.96.7 Anselm Kiefer, ''Your Golden Hair, Margarete'' (1980) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York</ref>

A series of paintings which Kiefer executed between 1980 and 1983 depict looming stone edifices, referring to famous examples of National Socialist architecture, particularly buildings designed by [[Albert Speer]] and [[Wilhelm Kreis]]. The grand plaza in ''To the Unknown Painter'' (1983) specifically refers to the outdoor courtyard of Hitler's [[Reich Chancellery|Chancellery]] in Berlin, designed by Speer in 1938 in honor of the Unknown Soldier.<ref>http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5437835 Anselm Kiefer, ''Dem Unbekannten Maler (To the Unknown Painter)'', 1983) [[Christie's]] Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 11 May 2011, New York</ref> In 1984–85, he made a series of works on paper incorporating manipulated black-and-white photographs of desolate landscapes with utility poles and power lines. Such works, like ''Heavy Cloud'' (1985), were an indirect response to the controversy in West Germany in the early 1980s about NATO's stationing of tactical nuclear missiles on German soil and the placement of nuclear fuel processing facilities.<ref>http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1995.14.41 Anselm Kiefer, ''Heavy Cloud'' (1985), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York</ref>

By the mid-1980s, Kiefer's themes widened from a focus on Germany's role in civilization to the fate of art and culture in general. His work became more sculptural and involved not only national identity and collective memory, but also [[occult]] [[symbol]]ism, theology and [[mysticism]]. The theme of all the work is the trauma experienced by entire societies, and the continual rebirth and renewal in life. During the 1980s his paintings became more physical, and featured unusual textures and materials.<ref>[[Sue Hubbard]] (24 October 2008), [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/margarete-1981-by-anselm-kiefer-saatchi-collection-970630.html] Margarete (1981) by Anselm Kiefer (Saatchi collection). ''The Independent''</ref> The range of his themes broadened to include references to ancient Hebrew and Egyptian history, as in the large painting ''[[Osiris and Isis]]'' (1985–87). His paintings of the 1990s, in particular, explore the universal myths of existence and meaning rather than those of national identity.<ref name="Christies Auctions & Private Sales 2001">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer (B. 1945) | website=Christie's Auctions & Private Sales | date=8 February 2001 | url=https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-1992579/?intObjectID=1992579 | access-date=30 March 2022}}</ref> From 1995 to 2001, he produced a cycle of large paintings of the cosmos.<ref name="Collection Online | Anselm Kiefer">{{cite web|url=http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/bio/?artist_name%3DAnselm+Kiefer%26page%3D1%26f%3DName%26cr%3D1 |title=Collection Online &#124; Anselm Kiefer |access-date=4 June 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110429013316/http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/bio/?artist_name=Anselm%20Kiefer&page=1&f=Name&cr=1 |archive-date=29 April 2011 }} Anselm Kiefer, Guggenheim Collection</ref>

Over the years Kiefer has made many unusual works, but one work stands out among the rest as particularly bizarre—that work being his 20 Years of Solitude piece. Taking over 20 years to create (1971–1991), 20 Years of Solitude is a ceiling-high stack of hundreds of white-painted ledgers and handmade books, strewn with dirt and dried vegetation, whose pages are stained with the artist's semen. The word solitude in the title references the artists frequent masturbation onto paper during the 20 years it took to create. He asked American art critic Peter Schjeldahl to write a text for a catalog of the masturbation books. Schjeldahl attempted to oblige but ultimately failed in his endeavor. No other critic would take on the task, so the work has largely faded into obscurity.<ref name=Schjeldahl1998>{{cite web|last=Schjeldahl |first=Peter |title=lost in the terrain: anselm kiefer |date=12 February 1998 |url= http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/schjeldahl/schjeldahl2-12-98.asp |publisher=Artnet}}</ref>

He would shock the art world yet again at a dinner party in May 1993. Kiefer and his second wife, Renate Graf, decorated a candlelit commercial loft in New York with white muslin and skinned animals hanging on hooks above a floor carpeted with white sand, and staffed it with waiters dressed as mimes with white-face. A handful of art world elite, such as the likes of Sherrie Levine, were served several courses of arcane organ meats, such as pancreas, that were mostly white in color. Not surprisingly, the guests did not find the meal to be particularly appetizing.<ref name=Schjeldahl1998 /> A group of NYC nightlife performers including Johanna Constantine, Lavinia Coop, Armen Ra and Flotilla DeBarge were hired to dress in white and mill about the West Village venue, Industria, and [[Anohni]] was hired to sing for Kiefer's guests.<ref name="Anselm Kiefer Emigre inTwo-part Installation">{{cite web | last1=Smith | first1=Roberta | title= Review/Art; Anselm Kiefer, Emigre, In Two-Part Installation | website=New York Times|  date=7 May 1993 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/07/arts/review-art-anselm-kiefer-emigre-in-two-part-installation.html }}</ref>

Since 2002, Kiefer has worked with concrete, creating the towers destined for the Pirelli warehouses in Milan, the series of tributes to [[Velimir Khlebnikov]] (paintings of the sea, with boats and an array of leaden objects, 2004–5), a return to the work of [[Paul Celan]]<ref name="Appointment only 2020">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer – Für Paul Celan | website=Thaddaeus Ropac | date=28 July 2020 | url=https://ropac.net/exhibitions/418-anselm-kiefer-fur-paul-celan/ | access-date=30 March 2022}}</ref> with a series of paintings featuring rune motifs (2004–06), and other sculptures. In 2003, he held his first solo show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg Villa Katz, ''Anselm Kiefer: Am Anfang''<ref name="Thaddaeus Ropac 2020 h907">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer | website=Thaddaeus Ropac | date=24 November 2020 | url=https://ropac.net/exhibitions/495-anselm-kiefer-am-anfang/ | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref> dedicated to a series of new works, centered on the recurring themes of history and myths. In 2005, he held his second exhibition in Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's Salzburg location, ''Für Paul Celan''<ref name="Thaddaeus Ropac 2020 j458">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer für Paul Celan | website=Thaddaeus Ropac | date=28 July 2020 | url=https://ropac.net/exhibitions/447-anselm-kiefer-fur-paul-celan/ | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref> which focused on Kiefer's preoccupation with the book, linking references to Germanic mythology with the poetry of Paul Celan, a German-speaking Jew from Czernowitz. The exhibition featured eleven works on canvas, a series of bound books shown in display cases, and five sculptures, including one powerful, monumental outdoor sculpture of reinforced concrete and lead elements, two leaden piles of books combined with bronze sunflowers, lead ships and wedges, and two monumental leaden books from the series The Secret Life of Plants. The exhibition toured to Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris and Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, the following year.<ref name="Thaddaeus Ropac 2020 j458" />

In 2006, Kiefer's exhibition, ''Velimir Chlebnikov'', was first shown in a small studio near Barjac, then moved to [[White Cube]] in London, then finishing in the [[Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum]] in Connecticut. The work consists of 30 large (2&nbsp;×&nbsp;3 meters) paintings, hanging in two banks of 15 on facing walls of an expressly constructed corrugated steel building that mimics the studio in which they were created. The work refers to the eccentric theories of the [[Russian Futurism|Russian futurist]] philosopher/poet [[Velimir Khlebnikov|Velimir Chlebnikov]], who invented a "language of the future" called "[[Zaum]]", and who postulated that cataclysmic sea battles shift the course of history once every 317 years. In his paintings, Kiefer's toy-like battleships—misshapen, battered, rusted and hanging by twisted wires—are cast about by paint and plaster waves. The work's recurrent color notes are black, white, gray, and rust; and their surfaces are rough and slathered with paint, plaster, mud and clay.<ref name="Wennerstrom Wennerstrom 2006 k829">{{cite web | last1=Wennerstrom | first1=Nord | title=Anselm Kiefer | website=Artforum | date=31 July 2006 | url=https://www.artforum.com/events/anselm-kiefer-182595/ | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref>

In 2007, he became the first artist to be commissioned to install a permanent work at the [[Louvre]], Paris, since Georges Braque some 50 years earlier. The same year, he inaugurated the Monumenta exhibitions series at the Grand Palais<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.grandpalais.fr/en/article/monumenta|title=Monumenta|website=grandpalais.fr|language=en|access-date=26 March 2020}}</ref> in Paris, with works paying special tribute to the poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann.

In 2009 Kiefer mounted two exhibitions at the White Cube gallery in London. A series of forest diptychs and triptychs enclosed in glass vitrines, many filled with dense Moroccan thorns, was titled ''Karfunkelfee'', a term from [[German Romanticism]] stemming from a poem by the post-war Austrian writer [[Ingeborg Bachmann]]. In ''The Fertile Crescent'', Kiefer presented a group of epic paintings inspired by a trip to India fifteen years earlier where he first encountered rural brick factories. Over the past decade, the photographs that Kiefer took in India "reverberated" in his mind to suggest a vast array of cultural and historical references, reaching from the first human civilization of [[Mesopotamia]] to the ruins of Germany in the aftermath of [[World War II|the Second World War]], where he played as a boy. "Anyone in search of a resonant meditation on the instability of built grandeur", wrote the historian [[Simon Schama]] in his catalogue essay, "would do well to look hard at Kiefer's ''The Fertile Crescent''".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/anselm_kiefer_masons_yard_hoxton_square_2009|title=Anselm Kiefer: Karfunkelfee and The Fertile Crescent|date=16 October 2009|publisher=White Cube}}</ref>

In ''Morgenthau Plan'' (2012), the gallery is filled with a sculpture of a golden wheat field, enclosed in a five-meter-high steel cage.<ref name="Gagosian 2018">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer: Morgenthau Plan, Le Bourget, October 19, 2012 – January 26, 2013 | website=Gagosian | date=12 April 2018 | url=https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2012/anselm-kiefer-morgenthau-plan/ | access-date=30 March 2022}}</ref> That same year, Kiefer inaugurated Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's gallery space in Pantin, with an exhibition of monumental new works, ''[https://www.ropac.net/exhibition/die-ungeborenen Die Ungeborenen].'' The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with a letter by Anselm Kiefer and essays by Alexander Kluge and Emmanuel Daydé. He continues to be represented by the gallery and participates in group and solo exhibitions at their various locations.{{Citation needed|date=May 2019}}

===Books===
In 1969 Kiefer began to design books. Early examples are typically worked-over photographs; his more recent books consist of sheets of lead layered with paint, minerals, or dried plant matter. For example, he assembled numerous lead books on steel shelves in libraries, as symbols of the stored, discarded knowledge of history.<ref name="The Museum of Modern Art 1945">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer | website=The Museum of Modern Art | date=8 March 1945 | url=https://www.moma.org/artists/3086 | access-date=30 March 2022}}</ref> The book ''Rhine'' (1981) comprises a sequence of 25 woodcuts that suggest a journey along the [[Rhine]] River; the river is central to Germany's geographical and historical development, acquiring an almost mythic significance in works such as Wagner's [[Der Ring des Nibelungen|Ring of the Nibelungs]]. Scenes of the unspoiled river are interrupted by dark, swirling pages that represent the sinking of the [[battleship Bismarck]] in 1941, during an Atlantic sortie codenamed [[Operation Rheinübung|Rhine Exercise]].<ref name="Kunstmuseum Bonn 2022 b649">{{cite web | title=Der Rhein, 1982 | website=Kunstmuseum Bonn | date=5 September 2022 | url=https://www.kunstmuseum-bonn.de/de/sammlung/sammlung-online/kunstwerke/der-rhein-1982/ | language=de | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref><ref name="Tate 2022 f932">{{cite web | title="The Rhine", Anselm Kiefer, 1981 | website=[[Tate]] | date=12 January 2022 | url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kiefer-the-rhine-t04128 | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref>

===Studios===
Kiefer's first large studio was in the attic of his home, a former schoolhouse in Hornbach. Years later he installed his studio in a factory building in Buchen, near Hornbach. In 1988, Kiefer transformed a former brick factory in Höpfingen (also near Buchen) into an extensive artwork including numerous installations and sculptures.<ref>''Anselm Kiefer: Studios'', Danièle Cohn, Flammarion, 2013.</ref> In 1991, after twenty years of working in the Odenwald, the artist left Germany to travel around the world—to India, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, and the United States.<ref>Alan Riding (3 April 2001), [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/arts/unseen-he-stares-down-history-look-art-says-anselm-kiefer-he-turns-jewish.html?src=pm] Unseen as He Stares Down History; Look at the Art, Says Anselm Kiefer as He Turns to Jewish Mysticism. ''The New York Times''</ref> In 1992 he established himself in [[Barjac, Gard|Barjac]], France,<ref>Roberta Smith (7 May 1993), [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/07/arts/review-art-anselm-kiefer-emigre-in-two-part-installation.html?src=pm] Anselm Kiefer, Emigre, In Two-Part Installation. ''[[The New York Times]]''.</ref> where he transformed his 35-hectare studio compound ''La Ribaute'' into a [[Gesamtkunstwerk]]. A derelict silk factory,<ref>Kristin Hohenadel (5 August 2011), [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/movies/sophie-fienness-over-your-cities-grass-will-grow.html] Following an Artist into His Labyrinth. ''The New York Times''</ref> his studio is enormous and in many ways is a comment on industrialization. He created an extensive system of glass buildings, archives, installations, storerooms for materials and paintings, subterranean chambers and corridors.<ref name="Kunstbulletin 2022 f535">{{cite web | title=Anselm Kiefer | website=Kunstbulletin | date=1 June 2022 | url=https://www.kunstbulletin.ch/notebook/anselm-kiefer-la-ribaute | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref>

[[Sophie Fiennes]] filmed Kiefer's studio complex in Barjac for her documentary study ''[[Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow]]'' (2010), which recorded both the environment and the artist at work. One critic wrote of the film: "Building almost from the ground up in a derelict silk factory, Kiefer devised an artistic project extending over acres: miles of corridors, huge studio spaces with ambitious landscape paintings and sculptures that correspond to monumental constructions in the surrounding woodland, and serpentine excavated labyrinths with great earthy columns that resemble stalagmites or termite mounds. Nowhere is it clear where the finished product definitively stands; perhaps it is all work in progress, a monumental concept-art organism."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/16/over-your-cities-grass-will-grow|title=Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow|author=Bradshaw, Peter|date=16 May 2010|access-date=25 October 2010|work=The Guardian|location=UK}}</ref>

During 2008, Kiefer left his studio complex at Barjac and moved to Paris. A fleet of 110 lorries transported his work to a {{convert|35000|sqft|m2|abbr=on}} warehouse in [[Croissy-Beaubourg]], outside of Paris, that had once been the depository for the [[La Samaritaine]] department store.<ref>{{cite web | last=Wroe | first=Nicholas | title=A life in art: Anselm Kiefer | website=[[The Guardian]] | date=21 March 2011 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/mar/21/anselm-kiefer-painting-life-art | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Prodger | first=Michael | title=Inside Anselm Kiefer's astonishing 200-acre art studio | website=[[The Guardian]] | date=12 September 2014 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/sep/12/anselm-kiefer-royal-academy-retrospective-german-painter-sculptor | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref> A journalist wrote of Kiefer's abandoned studio complex: "He left behind the great work of Barjac – the art and buildings. A caretaker looks after it. Uninhabited, it quietly waits for nature to take over, because, as we know, over our cities grass will grow". Kiefer spent the summer of 2019 living and working at Barjac."<ref name="Appleyard 2010 p328">{{cite web | last=Appleyard | first=Bryan | title=Good choice, Sophie | website=The Times & The Sunday Times | date=9 May 2010 | url=https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/good-choice-sophie-lgjn0f8zrs9 | access-date=21 December 2023}}</ref>