Anselm Kiefer: Morgenthau Plan, Le Bourget, October 19, 2012–January 26, 2013

Installation Views

Installation view. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat — Installation view
Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat

Works Exhibited

Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau Plan, 2012 (detail). Steel, sand, cotton, plaster, fabric, clay, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, terracotta, stone, and lead, 15 feet 8 inches × 53 feet 1 ¾ inches × 47 feet 3 inches (4.78 × 16.2 × 14.4 m) © Anselm Kiefer — Anselm Kiefer
*Morgenthau Plan*, 2012 (detail)
Steel, sand, cotton, plaster, fabric, clay, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, terracotta, stone, and lead, 15 feet 8 inches × 53 feet 1 ¾ inches × 47 feet 3 inches (4.78 × 16.2 × 14.4 m)
© Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau: laßt tausend Blumen blühen (Morgenthau: Let a thousand flowers bloom), 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer — Anselm Kiefer
*Morgenthau: laßt tausend Blumen blühen* (*Morgenthau: Let a thousand flowers bloom*), 2012
Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer, Paul Celan: wir schöpften die Finsternis leer, wir fanden das wort, das den Sommer heraufkam: Blume (We scooped the darkness empty, we found the word that ascended summer: flower), 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer — Anselm Kiefer, *Paul Celan: wir schöpften die Finsternis leer, wir fanden das wort, das den Sommer heraufkam: Blume* (*We scooped the darkness empty, we found the word that ascended summer: flower*), 2012
Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer, Fadensonnen: es sind noch Lieden zu singen jenseits der Menchen (Threadsuns: there are still songs to sing beyond mankind), 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer — Anselm Kiefer
*Fadensonnen: es sind noch Lieden zu singen jenseits der Menchen* (*Threadsuns: there are still songs to sing beyond mankind*), 2012
Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau Plan, 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 74 ¾ × 149 ⅝ inches (190 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer — Anselm Kiefer
*Morgenthau Plan*, 2012
Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 74 ¾ × 149 ⅝ inches (190 × 380 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer

Thumbnail - Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau Plan, 2012 (detail). Steel, sand, cotton, plaster, fabric, clay, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, terracotta, stone, and lead, 15 feet 8 inches × 53 feet 1 ¾ inches × 47 feet 3 inches (4.78 × 16.2 × 14.4 m) © Anselm Kiefer

Thumbnail - Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau: laßt tausend Blumen blühen (Morgenthau: Let a thousand flowers bloom), 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer

Thumbnail - Anselm Kiefer, Paul Celan: wir schöpften die Finsternis leer, wir fanden das wort, das den Sommer heraufkam: Blume (We scooped the darkness empty, we found the word that ascended summer: flower), 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer

Thumbnail - Anselm Kiefer, Fadensonnen: es sind noch Lieden zu singen jenseits der Menchen (Threadsuns: there are still songs to sing beyond mankind), 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer

Thumbnail - Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau Plan, 2012. Oil, emulsion, and acrylic on photograph on canvas, 74 ¾ × 149 ⅝ inches (190 × 380 cm) © Anselm Kiefer

About

Gagosian is pleased to inaugurate a new exhibition space at Le Bourget in the north of Paris with Morgenthau Plan, an exhibition by Anselm Kiefer. Following major exhibitions at Gagosian in New York (1998, 2000, 2002, and 2010), Los Angeles (2008), and Rome (2009), this is Kiefer’s first exhibition with the gallery in Paris.

Kiefer’s monumental archive of human memory gives overt material presence to a broad range of cultural myths and metaphors—from the Old and New Testaments, the Kabbalah, and ancient Roman history to the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. Fusing art and literature, painting and sculpture, Kiefer engages the complex events of history and the ancestral epics of life, death, and the cosmos. He integrates, expands, and regenerates imagery and techniques, emphasizing the importance of the sacred and the spiritual.

In Morgenthau Plan, the gallery is filled with a sculpture of a golden wheat field, enclosed within a five-meter-high steel cage. Kiefer’s wheat field refers to the plan proposed in 1944 by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to transform Germany after World War II into a pre-industrial, agricultural state thereby limiting its ability to wage war. Morgenthau sought to divide Germany into two independent states, annexing or dismantling all German centers of industry. Although the Morgenthau Plan was never realized, it represented a potential alternative German history.

Artist

Anselm Kiefer

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From the Quarterly

In Conversation
Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein

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.

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