1. Anselm Kiefer, Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1969-2009, Gouache on photography, 110,5 x 86 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, 2023. Photo: Atelier Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer photographed his life for decades. Now, it becomes a demonstration of his life, in Germany and somewhere else.
Until the start of March 2023, the LaM (Lille Métropole Museum of Modern Art, Contemporary Art and Art Brut) present the exhibition "Anselm Kiefer - Photography in the beginning", an exhibition dedicated to the German artist, which is well-know for his gigantic canvases and installations. This time, the exhibition presents the German artist as a photographer, a photographer of his life and worldwide events.
Anselm Kiefer. His life
2. Anselm Kiefer, Für Martin, Heidegger Todtnauberg (For Martin Heidegger Todtnauberg), 2010-2014, Black and white photograph, charcoal, and silver foil, 20 pages and 9 double pages and a cover, 103 x 66 x 4 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, Photo: Charles Duprat
Born on March 8, 1945, in Donaueschingen, Germany, Anselm Kiefer experienced a tumultuous start as his birth which coincided with the waning days of World War II. Raised by his grandmother until the age of six, Kiefer later joined his parents in Ottersdorf in 1951, a town near the Black Forest and the Rhine.
In 1966, Kiefer spent time at the Sainte-Marie de la Tourette monastery in France, where his fascination with raw materials began. Thus, he enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Fribourg-en-Brisgau, and started making "books" with collages featuring images from magazines and photographs, laying the foundation for his diverse artistic approach.
15 years later, the artist represented Germany at the 39th Venice Biennale in 1980. But both Kiefer and Georg Baselitz faced accusations of reviving nationalist imagery, leading to allegations of fascism.
Over time the artist also accepts to create exhibitions with museum/ or special installations such as the 1998 exhibition of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or when the Louvre installed the painting "Athanor" and two sculptures in the museum in 2007. Since then he had exhibition in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Panthéon and a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou.
Nowadays, the 2023 exhibition of the LaM - Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, d'Art Contemporain et d'Art Brut is the first exhibition which focus on the role of photography in Kiefer's work.
When you enter the exhibition space of the museum, you are greeted by a picture, a photography of a soldier in a Wehrmacht (the German army uniform) during the 3rd Reich (the German Nazi state). But, in fact it's the artist himself, which paid an hommage to his birth in 1945, at the end of the Second World War and the Nazi era. This work date back from 1969, when the artist was 24 years old.
Thus, the first room present the earliest works of the show, and it's first experimentation with photography, sometime evoking the past of the artist, but also to question his own responsibility: what would he have done? Thus stepping in the foot of the person of the time and trying to rephrase the history of the Nazi regime.
At the time of this experimentation, in the 1960s, he only started making photograph. And his first serial work titled the "Occupations", document a series of actions in which he integrates history's and personal story's into his body. At the time, he mostly photographs himself, in his studio, and thus being surrounded by his inspirations such as books dedicated to Jean Genet, one of his favourite authors.
With these representations of himself, Kiefer represent a real subject, to the point where he has a full spectrum of photography, becoming a style of documentation. Thus, some photograph has presented the shadow of these men, thus the body became fragmented.
The second room of the exhibition present the use of books in the works of the artist, combined with numerous black and white photographies on the walls of the room. Here, the object of the books became quite an important part of Kiefer's practice. His mixing the graphics of the books, the design, the paper, the content and the subject, thus the photographies. In his case, it's the assemblage of images, motifs, objects, materials and writings which contains a part of the mystery, thus inviting the visitors to read and explore one or numerous books positioned on a metallic table at the back of the room.
Around the books, the artist presents numerous photographies of the landscape, which keeps the memory of the past alive, with the use of German soil in the background. This backdrop is the one of German romanticism, but also the one of the wars, of the horrors of the Shoah.
Those books started out in the 60s, when Kiefer wanted to create an archive, thus integrating photography as visual materials, showcasing a variety of images, and series or experimentations. From subjects such as historical photographs, photos of occupations, views of his studio, railway tracks, sunflowers, farmlands, and snow-covered furrows.
The third room present the fascination Kiefer have with his landscape, and more precisely the landscape of the south of France where this atelier is placed, in Barjac (Gard, Southern France).
In this studio, he mostly creates works infused between the earth and the sky, between the human world and cosmic immensity. Thus, the sunflowers, which he planted in his garden is also use in his works, thus marking the link between the planet earth and the sun and the stars, between the seeds and the stars.
He's also inspired by the physician Robert Fludd, who said "there is no plant that does not have its corresponding star in the sky.”
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3. Anselm Kiefer, Calmly Unendingly Moves, 2023, Glass, Steel, Photography on lead and mix technique, 385 x 145 x 145 © Anselm Kiefer, Photo: Georges Poncet
The fourth room of the exhibition presents an arrangement of elements and materials commonly found in Kiefer's atelier: a bicycle, a cascading film rolls intricately intertwined with handwritten quotes and dedications, one work presented within a glass box, and so on.
Thus, those works are mostly made out of things he has in his studio. Thus, he amassed components to create a "film roll", serving as a documentation of Kiefer's life and its memories which translate into works made out of lead, clay, bicycle, which we're about to be destroyed.
In one of his first display cases, "Weltzeit-Lebenszeit" (World Time-Life Time) from 1988, the artist present a roll of lead with photographs laminated onto them. Such rolls have become a recurrent feature of his visual vocabulary: photographs occupy space and provide his paintings with volume.
4. Anselm Kiefer, Lilith, 1990, Oil, emulsion, charcoal, hair, shellac, ashes on canvas with clay and lead, 380 x 560 cm, © Anselm Kiefer. Photo : Georges Poncet
The fifth room of the show is introduced by an imposing canvas which presents a bird’s-eye view of a gigantic modern city. Somehow, the horizon line is so high that the sky is absent, thus the entire canvas is saturated, with the use of dust, earthy hues, ashes and clay.
In the middle of the canvas, the name "Lilith" is written. This name comes from the Hebrew, which means “woman of the night” or “demon”. In the context of Jewish mythology, Lilith was a rebellious, free-spirited woman who also brought misfortune and chaos.
Moreover, the image of the War is also expressed by the decline of civilisations and the disasters that punctuate history, thus Lilith became a symbol.
These works are also deeply linked to architecture remains and the use of dust and disrepair materials. But, everything goes back to architecture, which keep the memory of the past alive and open up perspectives towards the future. With his personal photographs he captured in Egypt, India, São Paulo, he recycled what he has in future pictures.
The sixth room of the show is theme around the sky and the sea. Thus the room present at the beginning "Am Anfang", which present a large black and white seascape and a white ladder, which link the rolling waves to the dense and heavy cloud.
Thus, Kiefer offers us a message of hope and a form of redemption. While the sky is an invitation of melancholy, the flow of images is still from the past and the war, thus, the memory of the viewer is still haunted by the past, and the only way to escape it to take the ladder to the sky and heaven.
The seventh room present different works from different decades to the viewer, thus this tunnel present paintings, but also drawings and other medium which are linked to photography, first with the notion of time, but also the one of archival pieces.
5. Anselm Kiefer, Der Rhein (The Rhine), 1969-2012, Electrolysis on photographic print mounted on lead, 380 x 1,100 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, Photo Georges Poncet
The last room and piece of the exhibition titled "Der Rheine" (Le Rhin) - 1969-2012, which prieent the Rhine river, both a border and a symbol, which was expanded during floods, revealing lights on the other bank—a promise of the future for the child unable to cross.
In a large lead photograph depicting the river, Kiefer's silhouette embodies German romanticism, contemplating the distant bank. The artwork underscores his role as an artist, stating, "When I speak of borders, I speak of our very essence."
Art, as a frontier on the edge between mimicry and abstraction, reflects the essence of being.This concept extends to the transmutation of art, where the artist holds the responsibility for transforming life through art and art itself through processes like electrolysis.
The boundary between various artistic mediums dissolves, photographs, paintings, books, or sculptures. Before the almost diminutive work, "En Sof (Limited)," the infinite concentrates to make space for creation—a profound symbol of transformation.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: LaM
Date: 6.10.2023 - 3.3.2024
Curator: Sébastien Delos, Jean de Loisy and Grégoire Prangé
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the LaM
Lam
1 allée du Musée
FR-59650 - Villeneuve d'Ascq
Phone: +33 03 20 19 68 68
Mail: info@musee-lam.fr