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拍品专文
In Untitled, 2004, Anselm Kiefer conjures a majestic vision of heaven and earth in acrylic and lead. A modernist staircase, its form partly inspired by Le Corbusier’s Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette, rises from a rust-coloured, devastated earth towards a turbulent lead-grey sky. Above, having ascended the nine steps and flapping its spread-out sleeves as if they were wings, a lead nightshirt floats, its stitched, collaged silhouette about to escape the confines of the sheet. Illuminating this metaphysical ascent is a shining white triangle, a form which recalls the spiritual Trinity, layered with the symbolic, mystical associations of the Kabbalah and the occult. Since the 1990s, Kiefer has explored the heavenly and material realms through the visual power of metaphor, often employing ladders, stairs, spirals, and lightning rods – images born of his study of arcane religious texts – to link the two kingdoms. Yet the artist’s use of these symbols is rarely straightforward, as Michael Auping notes, ‘Staircases generally offer a clear path from one place to another. Kiefer’s stairs – which lead in all directions, often simply into the sky – may be a wry caution about taking metaphors literally’ (M. Auping, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas 2005, p. 124).
An alchemical fascination with materials such as lead, gold, charcoal and soil has been clear since Kiefer’s early work of the 1970s, which grappled with the unspoken traumas of Germany’s past; while still employing such symbolically potent elements, Kiefer’s later work has seen a progressive shift to wider, more universal concerns, exploring earth, heaven and artistic identity through complex references to history, theology and esoteric literature. A crucial early experience in this synthesis of scholarship and spirituality was a 1966 visit to the Dominican monastery of Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette, near Lyon. The artist stayed here for three weeks in solitude, ‘just thinking quietly – about the larger questions’ (A. Kiefer, quoted in Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas 2005, p. 29). The priory, designed by the legendary modernist architect Le Corbusier, features distinctive open stairways that are echoed in the stair motif of Untitled. He recalls that the monastery ‘was an inspiring building in the sense that a very simple material, a modern material, could be used to create a spiritual space. Great religions and great buildings are part of the sediment of time; like pieces of sand. Le Corbusier used the sand to construct a spiritual space… He tried to make heaven on earth – the ancient paradox’ (A. Kiefer in conversation with M. Auping, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas 2005, p. 168). Through his richly physical technique and masterful command of symbol, Kiefer similarly elevates his materials and unmoors us from the world, offering a vision of a personal, artistic road to the divine.
An alchemical fascination with materials such as lead, gold, charcoal and soil has been clear since Kiefer’s early work of the 1970s, which grappled with the unspoken traumas of Germany’s past; while still employing such symbolically potent elements, Kiefer’s later work has seen a progressive shift to wider, more universal concerns, exploring earth, heaven and artistic identity through complex references to history, theology and esoteric literature. A crucial early experience in this synthesis of scholarship and spirituality was a 1966 visit to the Dominican monastery of Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette, near Lyon. The artist stayed here for three weeks in solitude, ‘just thinking quietly – about the larger questions’ (A. Kiefer, quoted in Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas 2005, p. 29). The priory, designed by the legendary modernist architect Le Corbusier, features distinctive open stairways that are echoed in the stair motif of Untitled. He recalls that the monastery ‘was an inspiring building in the sense that a very simple material, a modern material, could be used to create a spiritual space. Great religions and great buildings are part of the sediment of time; like pieces of sand. Le Corbusier used the sand to construct a spiritual space… He tried to make heaven on earth – the ancient paradox’ (A. Kiefer in conversation with M. Auping, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas 2005, p. 168). Through his richly physical technique and masterful command of symbol, Kiefer similarly elevates his materials and unmoors us from the world, offering a vision of a personal, artistic road to the divine.