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拍品专文
‘Each of these buildings has a history created by its own fiction and need to demonstrate its philosophy of existence. That fiction is part of the debris of history. My images connect with that debris. They attempt to connect with the beginning or the end, with a deep and lost memory between here and there’
(exh. cat., Fort Worth, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, 2005, p. 41).
‘We can be reaching for the sky or we can find ourselves under surveillance from above’ (N. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Aperiatur Terra, exh. cat., White Cube, 2007, p.73)
In Cosmos and Demian, 2005, Anselm Kiefer confronts notions of permanence, ruin, celebration and destruction by ‘carving’ out the image of two monumental decaying monoliths using extraordinary earthly materials. Oil, emulsion, shellac, clay, flowers and lead are used to depict two derelict buildings which resemble bombed out ruins. The crumbling, cracked concrete of the towering architecture is set into a surface of decaying, muddy earth. The two towers belong to a series of works executed by Kiefer consisting of numerous large-scale tower installations, one of which consisted of two colossal towers entitled Jericho, installed as part of the artist’s retrospective in the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2006. For Kiefer, the towers represent ‘the ultimate source of the flow of the purest divine light’ that enables us to live both in the heavens and the earth. As Norman Rosenthal suggested, ‘We can be reaching for the sky or we can find ourselves under surveillance from above’ (N. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Aperiatur Terra, exh. cat., White Cube, 2007, p.73). These towers are not only in one sense symbols of connection between land and sky but also of man’s spiritual aspirations and the potential tragedy of them being taken away. Kiefer’s concept consciously mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel and the legend’s account of the tensions, conflict and fragilities of man’s quest for enlightenment.
Cosmos and Demian is titled in reference to two Third Century physicians who refused to recant their faith and were martyred and later canonised as saints. Converting many to Christianity throughout their charitable medical work, the two saints are often depicted as twins. A rare elaboration of the legend of the two saints was realized by Fra Angelico as an altarpiece during the 15th Century. The Healing of Palladia by St Cosmas and St Damian, 1437-40 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), depicts the saints offering care to Palladia, referencing the human condition in desire for transcendence. The symbolic disparity which the two saints represent is the disconnection in the aspiration for a spiritual existence with the final misfortune which followed. Kiefer uses the saints as paradigms to configure both the immense hope and futility of the rising towers.
Kiefer believes fervently that artists are able to invest their materials with meaning, transcending their physicality. The various media he uses are chosen with deliberate thought to their symbolic potential. He has spoken recently of the richness of a painting, as opposed to the photograph. ‘A photograph is only the instant the shutter was open, while a painting doesn’t only show a moment; it presents a history. It’s a living thing. It changes, it has depth’ (A. Kiefer, quoted in M. Gayford, ‘I like vanished things: Anselm Kiefer on art, alchemy and his childhood’, The Spectator, 20 September 2014). As if to emphasise this enigmatic quality, his paintings have deeply textured surfaces that combine a thick layer of paint with a thin veil of gouache, acrylic and resin, as well as clay and cardboard, as in this present work. It is this paradoxical fusion of earth-coloured, weighty, rough materials with the symbols of ascent which lends Cosmos and Demian its gravitas, and has earned Kiefer international recognition as an artist who is unafraid of infusing visually powerful work with the promise of intellectual enlightenment.
(exh. cat., Fort Worth, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, 2005, p. 41).
‘We can be reaching for the sky or we can find ourselves under surveillance from above’ (N. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Aperiatur Terra, exh. cat., White Cube, 2007, p.73)
In Cosmos and Demian, 2005, Anselm Kiefer confronts notions of permanence, ruin, celebration and destruction by ‘carving’ out the image of two monumental decaying monoliths using extraordinary earthly materials. Oil, emulsion, shellac, clay, flowers and lead are used to depict two derelict buildings which resemble bombed out ruins. The crumbling, cracked concrete of the towering architecture is set into a surface of decaying, muddy earth. The two towers belong to a series of works executed by Kiefer consisting of numerous large-scale tower installations, one of which consisted of two colossal towers entitled Jericho, installed as part of the artist’s retrospective in the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2006. For Kiefer, the towers represent ‘the ultimate source of the flow of the purest divine light’ that enables us to live both in the heavens and the earth. As Norman Rosenthal suggested, ‘We can be reaching for the sky or we can find ourselves under surveillance from above’ (N. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Aperiatur Terra, exh. cat., White Cube, 2007, p.73). These towers are not only in one sense symbols of connection between land and sky but also of man’s spiritual aspirations and the potential tragedy of them being taken away. Kiefer’s concept consciously mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel and the legend’s account of the tensions, conflict and fragilities of man’s quest for enlightenment.
Cosmos and Demian is titled in reference to two Third Century physicians who refused to recant their faith and were martyred and later canonised as saints. Converting many to Christianity throughout their charitable medical work, the two saints are often depicted as twins. A rare elaboration of the legend of the two saints was realized by Fra Angelico as an altarpiece during the 15th Century. The Healing of Palladia by St Cosmas and St Damian, 1437-40 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), depicts the saints offering care to Palladia, referencing the human condition in desire for transcendence. The symbolic disparity which the two saints represent is the disconnection in the aspiration for a spiritual existence with the final misfortune which followed. Kiefer uses the saints as paradigms to configure both the immense hope and futility of the rising towers.
Kiefer believes fervently that artists are able to invest their materials with meaning, transcending their physicality. The various media he uses are chosen with deliberate thought to their symbolic potential. He has spoken recently of the richness of a painting, as opposed to the photograph. ‘A photograph is only the instant the shutter was open, while a painting doesn’t only show a moment; it presents a history. It’s a living thing. It changes, it has depth’ (A. Kiefer, quoted in M. Gayford, ‘I like vanished things: Anselm Kiefer on art, alchemy and his childhood’, The Spectator, 20 September 2014). As if to emphasise this enigmatic quality, his paintings have deeply textured surfaces that combine a thick layer of paint with a thin veil of gouache, acrylic and resin, as well as clay and cardboard, as in this present work. It is this paradoxical fusion of earth-coloured, weighty, rough materials with the symbols of ascent which lends Cosmos and Demian its gravitas, and has earned Kiefer international recognition as an artist who is unafraid of infusing visually powerful work with the promise of intellectual enlightenment.