A retrospective volume of Anselm Kiefer's work, this catalogue addresses the artist's entire career through the lens of one compelling theme. From his earliest sculptures to his recent highly textured paintings, Anselm Kiefer has woven themes of heaven and earth into his work, exploring the polarities of these ideas while struggling to define the transcendent quality that places art squarely in between. Destruction and rebirth, glory and shame, sin and redemption all figure prominently in Kiefer's often controversial depictions of Germany's physical and cultural landscape. This catalogue of more than sixty reproductions includes Kiefer's first work, "Heaven", as well as numerous other rare early works. It features brand new, previously unpublished watercolours produced specifically for the publication as well as an interview with the artist.
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Kiefer is an international art star and a German master of scorched and scummy stuff who deploys a prodigious vision on an enormous scale. Curator Auping presents a superb introduction to Kiefer's work since the 1960s in a book accompanying a widely traveling exhibit that is organized around the artist's philosophical underpinnings. Born in 1945, Kiefer makes art in the wake of World War II that represents a constant struggle between the burdens of history and the quest for spiritual redemption. The viewer must decide whether it's bombast or humble desire that leads him to explore and embrace the universe in paintings and sculpture that attempt to corral science and serpents, angels and sperm, kabbalah and cosmology. Kiefer's world is famously gray, typified by his extensive use of lead as a symbol of ambiguity, alchemy, and human potential. Another recurring theme is the book as icon, vessel, and transformative object. Auping's reverent essay and his Q&A with Kiefer steer clear of personality and stick close to the work. Steve Paul
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
State of Art, Autumn 2005 'Features watercolours produced specifically for the publication.' Art Review, September 2005 'Focus[es] on Kiefer's life-long exploration of the relationship between heaven and earth.'
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
restrospective of this notable artist's career and art,
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This review is from: Anselm Kiefer Heaven and Earth (Hardcover)
The German artist Kiefer's first project titled "The Heavens" ("Die Himmel") sounded the note for the major theme of his work through the following decades. This first was a book-like project with several leaves completed in 1969. Coming after this were sculpture-like, installation-like works (before this form was widely practiced) using the earthy materials of lead, brick, metal, wood, cloth, and often cast-off materials, as used in "found" art, though with not nearly the effect. Born in 1945, Kiefer could never free himself from the oppressiveness of the German psychoses and atrocities of the Nazi years, especially being a Jew. "[Kiefer] does not assume the existence of a paradise, only the ancient need to imagine one." One sees in the artist's dense, bewitching works usually made of assorted materials this primitive longing for paradise impacted by the carnage and horrors of 20th century's crazed politics and warfare on a huge scale. The touches of brightness in many of Kiefer's works are sometimes overwhelmed by bricks and other materials the color of cinders, ashes, an unmistakable reference to the Holocaust and the "scorched earth" warfare waged by the German war machine. It is the natural materials of the art works such as leaves, ground, and cotton spun into clothing, not religious visions of Heaven, which offer any hope of transformative redemption and immortality there may be. As noted in the "Introduction," Kiefer regarded the earth as a "kind of alchemical fragment" still being forged. "In Kiefer's cosmology, the universe is an immense athanor, or alchemical oven, where spirit and matter are in continued process of creation and destruction." The book succeeds estimably as a retrospective on the span of Kiefer's career. Varying perspectives from distant to close-up on the art works enable one to grasp the complex historical, cultural, and mythical thoughts reflected in the composite, multilayered works and also the undying struggle between hope and memory embodied in them.
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing book,
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This review is from: Anselm Kiefer Heaven and Earth (Hardcover)
Anselm's artwork is amazing. This book tells all about the artist, his artwork, and the storys behind them. It has amazing photos and details.
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly Heaven,
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This review is from: Anselm Kiefer Heaven and Earth (Hardcover)
This is a fantastic book. Anselm Keifer is one of my favorite artists of today. His work is so powerful that it is difficult to imagine it translated into a printed form, but this book does a great job of an almost impossible task. Keifer's work must be seen in person to be fully felt, but short of that, this book still manages to impress.
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