.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Anselm Kiefer’s Makulisten, Immakulisten is an epic canvas that epitomizes the dramatic and evocative narratives which characterize the artist’s most notable paintings. Rich with spiritual and secular references, Kiefer’s active surface is covered with swathes of thick impasto and supports the charred remains of two handmade books, another demonstration of the artist’s complex intertwining of religious and worldly themes. Books are regarded as being among his most important motifs and have been included in some of his most significant paintings including The Book, 1979-85, now in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and Book with Wings, 1992-94, in the collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Along with his teacher Joseph Beuys and his contemporaries Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer redefined European art in the wake of World War II. His powerful paintings and sculptures have come to embody the collective struggle in postwar German culture to come to terms with its recent past.
This expansive canvas appears to be covered in thick clay, an effect created by an impasto of emulsion and acrylic. This ridged and fissured substrate has then been covered in oil paint in Kiefer’s signature grey and earth tones–a palette “perfectly suited to expressing the transitional, expectant nature of the void” (R. Davey, “In the beginning is the end and in the end is the beginning,” in Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat., London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2014, p. 54). On closer inspection glimmers of color emerge, most notably in the red and yellow flames that flicker from two painted mounds, each bearing the charred remains of a book. These mounds are densely worked, pitted and shadowed, whereas a lighter passage between them ripples and sparkles like water. The words Makulisten and Immakulisten are inscribed in cursive at the top of the canvas, the letters intermittently subsumed by the lively brushwork beneath.
The title refers to Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, a topic of intense and occasionally violent debate for centuries. In AD 431, the Roman Emperor Theodosius II convened a council of Christian bishops in Ephesus. The council confirmed the original Nicene Creed and condemned the teachings of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who held that the Virgin Mary could be called the Christotokos (“Birth Giver of Christ”) but not the Theotokos (“Birth Giver of God”) (P. Schaff and H. Wace eds., The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1890). The books of Nestorius were declared to be heresy and were burned, in one of the most notorious book-burnings in history. In 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which states that Mary, Mother of God was “preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.” Kiefer has spoken of his fascination with this dogma, describing it as “something of an artistic act” and drawing parallels with the “complete authority an artist may have in his/her work” (A. Kiefer, quoted in K. Dermutz, “A Conversation with Anselm Kiefer,” in Anselm Kiefer: Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, exh. cat., Salzburg, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2008, p. 117). By pairing the word Immakulisten with its opposite, Makulisten, Kiefer supplants the unilateral thrust of doctrine with the bilateral structure of debate. The two words set in play a series of binary oppositions that are operative throughout the painting, including: ascension and descension, birth and death, sin and salvation.
In 2007, Kiefer selected a number of drawings of the Virgin Mary from the collection of the Louvre to be displayed opposite his painting Athanor, a new permanent installation in the museum’s Sully wing. He was particularly enthralled by the drawings of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, in which “Mary ascends and descends again; she doesn’t stay in heaven but goes back down to earth.” Kiefer describes Mary as “wandering between two worlds,” identifying her with the transgression of boundaries, the theme of the Louvre exhibition (Kiefer quoted in Dermutz, pp. 117-120). In Makulisten, Immakulisten a sense of dynamism is created by the diagonal placement of the two mounds and the books attached to them, their pages spread like wings. Although these mounds are evocative of the burning bush, Kiefer has stated that: “In my paintings, the rock burns.” He relates this conflation of the vegetable and the mineral to the interchangeability of the animate organisms and inanimate objects in Romantic poetry (Kiefer quoted in Dermutz, p. 128).
Kiefer has produced handmade books since the late 1960s, sometimes exhibiting them as objects in their own right. The Book was the first painting to incorporate the codex form–a tome fabricated in lead, which has “no illustrations, no text; it signifies language itself” (C. W. Haxthausen, “The World, The Book, and Anselm Kiefer,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 133, No. 1065, December 1991, p. 850). Since then, the book has become a recurrent motif in Kiefer’s paintings and sculptures. The books in Makulisten, Immakulisten are burnt–perhaps signifying the violence of religious dogma, which requires the destruction, concealment or refutation of that which contradicts it. This annihilation is countered by the books’ resemblance to winged beings, which rise from the ashes of the burning rocks beneath them. Kiefer’s Book with Wings is a sculpture of a book on a steel lectern that sprouts a pair of feathery wings, paradoxically fashioned in weighty lead. This tension between pessimism and hope is extended in Makulisten, Immakulisten, in which the charred books are countered by the “Utopian potential” of the Virgin Mary, in whom “for the first time original sin is overcome” (Kiefer in Dermutz, p. 119).
Makulisten, Immakulisten was one of the first paintings produced in Kiefer’s Paris studio, to which he moved in 2008. A fleet of one hundred and ten trucks transported his work to Paris from his previous studio in Barjac, the South of France. Often, the move to a new studio prompts a period of reflection for artists, a taking stock of the past and a decisive turn towards future projects. Makulisten, Immakulisten embodies this process, referencing seminal works like The Book and Book with Wings while also encompassing Kiefer’s more recent focus on the Virgin Mary. In its densely packed, painterly strata, Kiefer’s enduring obsessions are overlaid with his current concerns.
This expansive canvas appears to be covered in thick clay, an effect created by an impasto of emulsion and acrylic. This ridged and fissured substrate has then been covered in oil paint in Kiefer’s signature grey and earth tones–a palette “perfectly suited to expressing the transitional, expectant nature of the void” (R. Davey, “In the beginning is the end and in the end is the beginning,” in Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat., London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2014, p. 54). On closer inspection glimmers of color emerge, most notably in the red and yellow flames that flicker from two painted mounds, each bearing the charred remains of a book. These mounds are densely worked, pitted and shadowed, whereas a lighter passage between them ripples and sparkles like water. The words Makulisten and Immakulisten are inscribed in cursive at the top of the canvas, the letters intermittently subsumed by the lively brushwork beneath.
The title refers to Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, a topic of intense and occasionally violent debate for centuries. In AD 431, the Roman Emperor Theodosius II convened a council of Christian bishops in Ephesus. The council confirmed the original Nicene Creed and condemned the teachings of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who held that the Virgin Mary could be called the Christotokos (“Birth Giver of Christ”) but not the Theotokos (“Birth Giver of God”) (P. Schaff and H. Wace eds., The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1890). The books of Nestorius were declared to be heresy and were burned, in one of the most notorious book-burnings in history. In 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which states that Mary, Mother of God was “preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.” Kiefer has spoken of his fascination with this dogma, describing it as “something of an artistic act” and drawing parallels with the “complete authority an artist may have in his/her work” (A. Kiefer, quoted in K. Dermutz, “A Conversation with Anselm Kiefer,” in Anselm Kiefer: Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, exh. cat., Salzburg, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2008, p. 117). By pairing the word Immakulisten with its opposite, Makulisten, Kiefer supplants the unilateral thrust of doctrine with the bilateral structure of debate. The two words set in play a series of binary oppositions that are operative throughout the painting, including: ascension and descension, birth and death, sin and salvation.
In 2007, Kiefer selected a number of drawings of the Virgin Mary from the collection of the Louvre to be displayed opposite his painting Athanor, a new permanent installation in the museum’s Sully wing. He was particularly enthralled by the drawings of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, in which “Mary ascends and descends again; she doesn’t stay in heaven but goes back down to earth.” Kiefer describes Mary as “wandering between two worlds,” identifying her with the transgression of boundaries, the theme of the Louvre exhibition (Kiefer quoted in Dermutz, pp. 117-120). In Makulisten, Immakulisten a sense of dynamism is created by the diagonal placement of the two mounds and the books attached to them, their pages spread like wings. Although these mounds are evocative of the burning bush, Kiefer has stated that: “In my paintings, the rock burns.” He relates this conflation of the vegetable and the mineral to the interchangeability of the animate organisms and inanimate objects in Romantic poetry (Kiefer quoted in Dermutz, p. 128).
Kiefer has produced handmade books since the late 1960s, sometimes exhibiting them as objects in their own right. The Book was the first painting to incorporate the codex form–a tome fabricated in lead, which has “no illustrations, no text; it signifies language itself” (C. W. Haxthausen, “The World, The Book, and Anselm Kiefer,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 133, No. 1065, December 1991, p. 850). Since then, the book has become a recurrent motif in Kiefer’s paintings and sculptures. The books in Makulisten, Immakulisten are burnt–perhaps signifying the violence of religious dogma, which requires the destruction, concealment or refutation of that which contradicts it. This annihilation is countered by the books’ resemblance to winged beings, which rise from the ashes of the burning rocks beneath them. Kiefer’s Book with Wings is a sculpture of a book on a steel lectern that sprouts a pair of feathery wings, paradoxically fashioned in weighty lead. This tension between pessimism and hope is extended in Makulisten, Immakulisten, in which the charred books are countered by the “Utopian potential” of the Virgin Mary, in whom “for the first time original sin is overcome” (Kiefer in Dermutz, p. 119).
Makulisten, Immakulisten was one of the first paintings produced in Kiefer’s Paris studio, to which he moved in 2008. A fleet of one hundred and ten trucks transported his work to Paris from his previous studio in Barjac, the South of France. Often, the move to a new studio prompts a period of reflection for artists, a taking stock of the past and a decisive turn towards future projects. Makulisten, Immakulisten embodies this process, referencing seminal works like The Book and Book with Wings while also encompassing Kiefer’s more recent focus on the Virgin Mary. In its densely packed, painterly strata, Kiefer’s enduring obsessions are overlaid with his current concerns.