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Lot Essay
'I grew up on the banks of the Rhine. France was on the other side. As a child, I saw the river as an insuperable obstacle, something you couldn't swim across. It thus acquired a mythical status for me. When you came to this barrier you could turn left or right but not go straight ahead, except in your imagination'
(A. Kiefer interview with B. Comment, in Art Press, Paris, September 1998).
A profoundly symbolic motif in Anselm Kiefer's oeuvre, the Rhine River helps foster Germany's sense of physical and psychological nationhood. Executed in two parts, Kiefer revisits the emblem of the Rhine that populated much of his work in the late 1960s in Der Rhein (Vertikal). Here the river flows along the base of the picture, recalling the iconic value it held within both Romanticism and the nationalist movements that followed. Architecturally, Kiefer enters into the political sphere by including a building looming over the river that recalls the style of the architects Speer and Wilhelm Kreis, visionaries favoured by the Nazi Regime. In doing so, the artist subtly juxtaposes the fluidity of nature, the river, with the rigid aesthetic dogmatisation imposed by Nazism.
Alluding to his German heritage on another level, Kiefer's use of the woodcut stands within an illustrious, long German art historical tradition spanning from the visually powerful prints of the great Renaissance master, Albrecht Drer to 20th century Expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Visually emphasising the fact that the work is comprised of two different woodcut prints by showing the edges between the two prints, Der Rhein (Vertikal) becomes not only what Mark Rosenthal called 'an icon for the contemplation of the fate of Germany and its citizens', but also 'a symbol of its lost artistic genius and an expression of Kiefer's own deeply haunted sense of artistic identity and awareness of the inherent danger in reaching for the sky or over to the other side of the river' (M. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat., New York, 1987, p. 106).
(A. Kiefer interview with B. Comment, in Art Press, Paris, September 1998).
A profoundly symbolic motif in Anselm Kiefer's oeuvre, the Rhine River helps foster Germany's sense of physical and psychological nationhood. Executed in two parts, Kiefer revisits the emblem of the Rhine that populated much of his work in the late 1960s in Der Rhein (Vertikal). Here the river flows along the base of the picture, recalling the iconic value it held within both Romanticism and the nationalist movements that followed. Architecturally, Kiefer enters into the political sphere by including a building looming over the river that recalls the style of the architects Speer and Wilhelm Kreis, visionaries favoured by the Nazi Regime. In doing so, the artist subtly juxtaposes the fluidity of nature, the river, with the rigid aesthetic dogmatisation imposed by Nazism.
Alluding to his German heritage on another level, Kiefer's use of the woodcut stands within an illustrious, long German art historical tradition spanning from the visually powerful prints of the great Renaissance master, Albrecht Drer to 20th century Expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Visually emphasising the fact that the work is comprised of two different woodcut prints by showing the edges between the two prints, Der Rhein (Vertikal) becomes not only what Mark Rosenthal called 'an icon for the contemplation of the fate of Germany and its citizens', but also 'a symbol of its lost artistic genius and an expression of Kiefer's own deeply haunted sense of artistic identity and awareness of the inherent danger in reaching for the sky or over to the other side of the river' (M. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat., New York, 1987, p. 106).