Acquisitions
ARTIST ROOMS: The d'Offay Donation
Anselm Kiefer (born 1945)
Three rooms comprising six works: three early paintings (Palette, 1981, Urd Werdande Skuld (The Norns), 1983 and Man under a Pyramid, 1996); a landscape painting; and two major installations (Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles, 1999 and Palmsonntag, 2006).
A key figure in European post-war culture, Anselm Kiefer’s art derives from his great awareness of history, theology, mythology, literature and philosophy, and an extraordinary ability to work with all kinds of materials from lead to concrete, from straw to human hair and sunflower seeds. He grew up near the French border on the Rhine. France was the land of his dreams on the other side of the river. In his early work he set out to understand Germany’s recent history, then still a taboo subject and one which inevitably aroused criticism and misunderstanding when he attempted it. He was interested in Beuys’s work and visited him but was not a pupil of his. Pictures of this period show Kiefer setting out on his journey, walking through a forest holding a burning branch. Later works draw on German military history, Wagnerian mythology and Nazi architecture to grapple with the possibility of pursuing creativity in the light of catastrophic human suffering. Kiefer’s technique of layering paint and debris gives visceral life to his preoccupations with decay and re-creation.
The d’Offay Donation includes major works from across the artist’s career. Palette (1981) expands on his theme equating painting to burning, which will cleanse the countryside and cauterise the wound inflicted by Nazism. Here painting is symbolised by a palette suspended above a smouldering abyss by a rope which is alight in several places. The painting Urd, Werdande, Skuld refers to the norns or fates of Germanic mythology whose names are Past, Present and Future and who sit by the well at the foot of the Yggdrasil, spinning or weaving the fate of men. They are an invisible presence in the grandiose vaulted emptiness of one of the un-built monuments to the delusion of the Third Reich.
After the reunification of Germany Kiefer moved to Barjac in the South of France in 1992 where he continued to develop preoccupations he had already initiated but which also had wider implications. His exploration of revolution in generation and in particular The Women of the Revolution began in Germany and expanded to include Women of Antiquity. His study of ancient belief-systems such as the Kabbala also grew. He travelled widely, to South America, India, China and Australia. His painting took on both a world and a cosmic view. In Barjac he worked on an ever larger scale. Confronted with the plants, climate and history of the south of France, inevitably sunflowers made their way into his work. He became increasingly interested in natural cycles, and in Robert Fludd’s theories about the lives of plants, the microcosm and the macrocosm, and his suggestion that for every plant there exists a correlated star. Man under a Pyramid (1996), reflects the artist’s interest in exploring his mind and body through meditation and in relating it to the stars and the cosmos through the pyramid, in this case seen in the form of a large crumbling stone pyramid from the ancient remains of Mexico or Egypt. Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles (The dark light that falls from the stars) is a favourite line from Le Cid by Corneille which came to mind when Kiefer began to work with sunflowers: ‘There was an obvious parallel with the black seeds on the flower and the night and the stars. The seeds were the stars. When I stuck them on a white canvas they became inverted stars, black on white like a negative.’ Kiefer’s preoccupation with the stars has now developed further into various huge paintings of star maps. The huge installation Palm Sunday (2006), which refers to the Christian holy day, the Sunday before Easter, combines the balance between death and resurrection, decay and recreation so characteristic of Kiefer’s work. The theme of Palm Sunday is the triumph before the betrayal, and death. There is some sense that nature is the betrayed in the fallen palm and framed ossuary of branches which covers the wall, though regeneration is always a possibility.
Palette 1981
Oil, shellac and emulsion on canvas
2900 x 4000 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Anselm Kiefer
Urd Werdande Skuld (The Norns) 1983
Oil, shellac, emulsion and fibre on canvas
4200 x 2800 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Anselm Kiefer
Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles 1999
Mixed media
Painting: 4700 x 4000 mm
Sculpture: 3400 x 1650 x 1100 mm
Overall display dimensions variable
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Anselm Kiefer
Artists
- Diane Arbus
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- Georg Baselitz
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- Joseph Beuys
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- Vija Celmins
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- Ellen Gallagher
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- Gilbert & George
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- Johan Grimonprez
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- Richard Hamilton
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- Ian Hamilton Finlay
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- Damien Hirst
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- Jenny Holzer
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- Alex Katz
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- Anselm Kiefer
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- Jeff Koons
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- Jannis Kounellis
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- Sol LeWitt
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- Richard Long
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- Robert Mapplethorpe
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- Agnes Martin
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- Mario Merz
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- Ron Mueck
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- Bruce Nauman
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- Charles Ray
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- Gerhard Richter
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- Ed Ruscha
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- Robert Ryman
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- Robert Therrien
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- Cy Twombly
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- Bill Viola
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- Andy Warhol
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- Lawrence Weiner
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- Francesca Woodman
