
Divine Emanations: Nymphs, Poets, and the Painter’s Palette
Janne Sirén considers Anselm Kiefer’s new paintings, the subject of an exhibition at Gagosian, New York, entitled Seal My Ears Shut and I Shall Hear You Still.
Fusing art and literature, painting and sculpture, Anselm Kiefer engages the complex events of history and the ancestral epics of life, death, and the cosmos. His monumental body of work represents a microcosm of collective memory, visually encapsulating a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions, from the Old and New Testaments, Kabbalah mysticism, Norse mythology, and Wagner’s Ring cycle to the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. In reflecting on Germany’s postwar identity and history, he also grapples with the national mythology of the Third Reich. Kiefer’s boundless repertoire of imagery is paralleled only by the breadth of mediums he employs.
Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany, in 1945, during the closing months of World War II. After studying law and Romance languages, he attended the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, while maintaining contact with Joseph Beuys. From 1971 to 1992, he lived and worked in Hornbach, Buchen, and Höpfingen, Germany; since then, he has lived and worked in France.
Kiefer’s oeuvre encompasses paintings, vitrines, installations, artist’s books, and an array of works on paper, including drawings, watercolors, collages, woodcuts, and photographs. The physical elements of his practice—from gold leaf, lead, concrete, and glass to textiles, tree roots, and burned books—are as symbolically resonant as they are wide-ranging. By integrating, expanding, and regenerating imagery and techniques, Kiefer brings to light the importance of myth and memory, the sacred and the spiritual.


Janne Sirén considers Anselm Kiefer’s new paintings, the subject of an exhibition at Gagosian, New York, entitled Seal My Ears Shut and I Shall Hear You Still.

Sébastien Delot is director of conservation and collections at the Musée national Picasso–Paris and the organizer of the first retrospective to focus on Anselm Kiefer’s use of photography, which was held at Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut (Musée LaM) in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France. He recently sat down with Gagosian director of photography Joshua Chuang to discuss the exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Punctum at Gagosian, New York. Their conversation touched on Kiefer’s exploration of photography’s materials, processes, and expressive potentials, and on the alchemy of his art.
Gagosian and Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center hosted a conversation between poets Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein inside Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Rothenberg and Bernstein explored some of the themes that occupy Kiefer—Jewish mysticism, the poetry of Paul Celan, and the formulation of a global poetics in response to the Holocaust—in a discussion and readings of their poetry.
On the occasion of his exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, the artist spoke with Michael Govan about his works that elaborate on themes of loss, history, and redemption.

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents make a selection from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the fourth installment, we are honored to present the artist Anselm Kiefer.

Jérôme Sans visits La Ribaute in Barjac, France, the vast studio-estate transformed by Anselm Kiefer over the course of decades. The labyrinthine site, now open to the public, stands as a total work of art, reflecting through its grounds, pavilions, and passageways major themes in Kiefer’s oeuvre: regeneration, mythology, memory, and more.

Camille Morineau writes of the triumph of the feminine at Anselm Kiefer’s former studio-estate in Barjac, France, describing the site and its installations as a demonstration of women’s power, a meditation on inversion and permeability, and a reversal of the long invisibility of women in history and myth.

Bobbie Sheng explores the symbiotic relationship between the poet and visual artists of his time and tracks the enduring influence of his poetry on artists working today.

Gagosian’s Georges Armaos speaks with the director of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark, about the exhibition Mythologies: The Beginning and End of Civilizations, the art of Anselm Kiefer, and the role of museums during times of crisis.

James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.

An exhibition at the Broad in Los Angeles prompts James Lawrence to examine how artists give shape and meaning to the passage of time, and how the passage of time shapes our evolving accounts of art.
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