Beuys-Kiefer
Beuys and Kiefer share a concern with trauma in the wake of the Second World War and a material strategy in their works that touches on alchemy and draws on other esoteric traditions.
Beuys experienced the war as a member of Hitler youth then as a Luftwaffe pilot while Kiefer was born the year the war ended. Kiefer was drawn to Beuys when he was remade as an artist and charismatic mentor at the D�sseldorf Academy in the early 70s.
For Beuys there was personal trauma to deal with and a history to come to terms with, Kiefer on the other hand struggled with the deep denial adopted by his post war peers. German baby boomers distanced themselves from their parent's generation and from recent history but Kiefer saw this as a dangerous and pathological state of mind that he sought to break through with his art.
JOSEPH BEUYS 1921 to 1986.
In hindsight Beuys has emerged as Europe�s most influential post war artist with a career spanning the period of the cold war. His work evolved in the context of a Germany facing up to revelations of the holocaust and it is this environment that formed the work.
2. L. Explaining pictures to a dead hare 1965
2. R. Bog action 1971 Beuys in the marshes at Cleves
Beuys grew up in the marshy country round Cleves shown here in a performance many years later. His experiences of childhood spent wandering round this wild country had a big impact on the way his art was to evolve.
�Then came the interest in plants and botany that has stayed with me all my life. It started as a kind of cataloguing of everything that grew in that area, all noted in exercise books. Our games became more elaborate. We would go off hunting for anything we could find, and then we build tents from rags and bits of material so we could show our collections. There was everything from beetles, mice, rats, frogs, fish and flies to old farmyard machines or anything technical we could get our hands on. Then we had our underground spaces too: dens and caves in a labyrinth we tunnelled under the earth.�
L&R Stag Hunt 1961
L&R Stag Hunt 1961
Stag Hunt is an accumulation of objects collected by Beuys over the years that continues this childhood practice into his later work including stags horns, bones, scientific equipment and chemicals. The newspapers are thought of as batteries of stored cultural matter.
With the emergence of the Nazi Party even Catholic Cleves was swept up in the turmoil. Beuys himself felt the energy and excitement of the new order and went on the infamous Sternmarsch to Nuremberg. There was a book burning at his school where Beuys rescued some listed books from the fire. Among these was Systema naturae by Linnaeus.
In 1940 he was called up and served in the Luftwaffe. His war was shattering and complex. He was injured five times and ended the war in a British prison camp but his most extreme experience was the celebrated crash in the Crimean winter.
He was reported missing presumed dead but in fact nomadic Tartars rescued him covering his burned body in animal fat and wrapping him in felt, (the earliest of fabrics made from compressed animal fur). This is the source of his interest in these materials but also his claim to a shamanic role. It is traditional for the Shaman to have returned from a near death experience to have made the journey to the other side as it were and so like Hermes the messenger of the Gods he can move between worlds bringing healing from the spirits.
Beuys work can be thought of as bringing together three traumas and attempting to deal with them as a whole in his art.
Firstly there is the universal trauma of birth or separation from the womb and (at least metaphorically) from the totality of nature.
Secondly experiencing near death and resuscitation by Tartar nomads.
Thirdly returning from war to realise the horror of the holocaust and his part in it. This is the historical trauma of Europe but of Germany in particular.
Between 1949 and 1958 Beuys was subject to a major nervous breakdown. This time was like a descent into the abyss where he struggled with himself and his demons. During this illness he evolved a theory of sculpture as an extension of bodily processes and warmth. Art became for him a matter of healing. Not only the individual body but also the social body.
He reports going to a farm when he was particularly depressed there the warm smell of cows breath, milk, manure and sweat in the cow barn reunited him with the earth and made him feel whole again. This is where he began to think of the separation of nature and culture and yearned to rediscover the mythical unity of prehistoric man with nature symbolised by worship of the Goddess.
L. detail from Heroin for a bathtub 1958
R. Drawing of woman. 1953
His idea involved a use of material based on the root of Material in �mater� the mother.
L&R Queen Bee 1952
The queen bee not only symbolises Venus and the cult of Astarte but also holds more mundane evidence of the body as a productive site. Out of their bodies the bees create materials, wax and honey and fabricate immaculate architecture. Nature in this case produces culture, thereby epitomising Beuys� sculptural theory
L&R Queen Bee and wax sculpture with bees
L&R Bees wax, Bees, sailcloth, neon, and fat filters 1963 vitrine.
Beuys also developed an interest in alchemical symbols but evolved his own language of materials. A broken neon tube wrapped in sailcloth soaked in hare�s fat and anointed with mercuric oxide is an energy tool. Being bent back on itself it also echoes the Eurasian staff and the mystical significance of the knee in alchemical drawings made when science was a more intuitive process. Beuys has been quoted as saying �I think with my knees�.
An important part of the healing process is to acknowledge the wound. This is a strategy that also figures very strongly in Kiefer�s early work.
L&R Auschwitz 1958
L&R Auschwitz 1958
Beuys assembled these studies and materials in response to a competition sponsored by the International Auschwitz committee. He later assembled all this material into these vitrines now at Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt.
L. Fat and felt soles 1963
R. Fat chair 1964
Fat embodies Beuys� sculptural theory in which everything in the world, physical or psychological passes from a chaotic undetermined state to a determined or crystalline state. For Beuys the chaotic is warm and creative while the structured is cold and intellectual. His project is to keep the process in constant circulation and to find a living balance between the two.
This stool is a jocular way of describing the process. The word stuhl is also a word for shit as in English. He describes the seat as �a site of digestive and excretive warmth processes, sexual organs and interesting chemical change, relating psychologically to will power.�
L&R. Fat pumps - Vacuum and mass action, 1968 �
These pumps were used to splatter fat about in performances demonstrating the change from fluid and chaotic to crystalline forms.
L&R Fat corner and Felt corner as used in Eurasia 1966
Here the fat forms a stable geometry echoed by the felt which is the other great insulator that was used to save Beuys life in the Crimea.
PERFORMANCES
L&R Explaining Pictures to a dead Hare 1965.
It is important when thinking about Beuys that we remember his mirth. Like Duchamp and Klein he saw the funny side of life and of his own most serious endeavours. Laughter is also very close to catharsis.
Beuys carried the hare round the room to see each picture. He wore a magnetic iron sole on one foot and felt on the other. This caused him to shuffle and clank his way about with great difficulty while also signifying insulation and conduction. While communing with the hare and the animal world in general he was also trying to get in touch with the earth itself. The hare by the way is a common choice for a Shaman to take as an animal guide on their journey to the underworld.
The radio made from bone and electrical components was tuned to a virtually inaudible wavelength. Beuys� explanations were mute so explaining and understanding was intuitive and imaginary.
L&R Mainstream 1967
In this year he also formed the German Student Party. It was a time of political revolt against the Vietnam War and CIA intervention into radical activity in Europe. This performance included comments on this infiltration. His actions as he leapt about and lay on the fat or slithered about the space simulated an epileptic fit.
L&R Manressa 1966
Manressa is a Catalan village where St Ignatius Loyola meditated after recovering from his war wounds in 1523. Beuys saw it as a site of initiation in western history, one with which he could personally identify.
In this performance Beuys generated an actual current using a Geisler tube, at times sparks actually flew from his fingertips.
L&R Expulsion from Akademie 1972.
In 1972 Beuys was removed from the Academy his radical political involvement including contact with the Red Brigade and his unconventional academic approach made him more trouble than the authorities felt he was worth. He had been inviting young artists to come to the Academy without enrolling and without offering formal assessments. While this must have been difficult for the institution it was an important source of new energy that spawned a great crowd of young artists for example Anselm Kiefer, Jorg Immendorff, Rebecca Horn and Walter Dahn.
After his expulsion Beuys went on to form his own loose institution the FIU or Free International University. Which Subsequently held conferences across Europe and became a dynamo for radical action and ideas.
ANSELM KIEFER
L. Joseph Beuys FIU at Documenta 1978
R. Joseph Beuys Saving the woods 1972
Anselm Kiefer went to Dusseldorf as a young artist to work with Joseph Beuys. Not as a student but as part of the coterie of artists who gathered around him and participated in the performances. In the poster from Saving the woods you can make out Kiefer just behind Beuys.
L. Anselm Kiefer Heroic symbols 1969
R. Anselm Kiefer Heroic symbols 1969
Kiefer had been making a series of performances himself, dressing up as a Nazi and throwing the salute in various significant sites for the history of The Third Reich. These performances became the basis of some of Kiefer�s first books back at the start of his professional life and they remain a key to his work to the present. Kiefer has been resolutely ambivalent about his position refusing to affirm what he himself might have done had he been born 20 years earlier, he will not say that he would not have been caught up in the hysteria as the young Beuys had been.
By refusing to take a position about what might have been, he opened himself up to the criticism that he is a sympathiser. I would argue that on the contrary to accept the possibility that one might have been caught up in the moment is a courageous and necessary intellectual step towards reconciliation. There can be no full reconciliation when empathy stops with the victim.
L. Anselm Kiefer To Genet 1969
R. Anselm Kiefer The flooding of Heidelberg 1969
Kiefer continued to make books that arguably contain the essence of all his major concerns throughout his life.
Like Beuys Kiefer began his work by �showing the wounds� In many early works he demonstrated how German history and mythology had been appropriated to Nazism and thereby rendered virtually taboo to as a source of contemporary thought. He has quoted Adorno who asked if there could still be poetry after the Holocaust?
By the mid 1980s he had moved on to exploring the intellectual and spiritual traditions of the people who had been eliminated from the country where he made his home. Frankfurt had been a great centre for music, philosophy, science and literature before the war but the Jewish community had been central to this culture and was now destroyed.
Kiefer was now able to go beyond his critical interest in Hiedegger�s phenomenology exploring less determined models of history to be found in mystical writings from the Cabbala and other esoteric models of the cosmos for example the writings of Isaac Luria and the esoteric texts of Pseudo-Dionysius on the angelic orders.
L. Anselm Kiefer Nothung 1973
R. Anselm Kiefer Father son and Holy Ghost 1973
Many of his early paintings explored Teutonic and Nordic myths. Like the performances this was a deliberate provocation. Contrary to appearances Kiefer does not have a taste for Wagner but he wanted to mourn all the aspects of German culture that had been lost as a result of its appropriation into Nazism.
L. Anselm Kiefer Progression from cool to warm 1976
R. Anselm Kiefer Martin Hiedegger 1976
These two books reveal connections back to Beuys and body processes and to Hiedegger�s discussions of the eternal separation of consciousness from its material objects.
L. Anselm Kiefer The cauterisation of the rural district of Buchen 1974
R. Anselm Kiefer Siegfried�s difficult road to Brunhilde 1977
Kiefer always made photographs and many of them form the basis for installation and painting. The subject matter is nearly always from his studio or the surrounding countryside near Buchen. These images form the basis of a whole series of paintings the difficult road sometimes appearing as the tracks leading to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
L. Anselm Kiefer The Stairs 1982
R. Anselm Kiefer Athanor 1983
These are typical examples of a series Kiefer began in the early 80s based on Fascist architecture. He often makes it seem half destroyed and on occasion shows coffins in place of pavers a reference to Ludwig Troost�s Memorial to the Nordic heroes commissioned by Hitler.
L. Anselm Kiefer Icarus in Brandenberg march sand 1981
R. Anselm Kiefer Das Wolun-Leid ( mit flugel) 1982
Parallel with these direct references to the Third Reich came a series that played with the aspirations for transcendence that had become so horribly deformed during the period. Wolun is the Germanic equivalent of Icarus although he takes others with him when he combusts.
L. Anselm Kiefer Ragnoroc 1983
R. Anselm Kiefer Untitled 1984
In these two images the heaven and the earth are joined in some way. Ragnoroc is the great rainbow serpent that comes up out of the sea arcs through the sky and plunges back to earth. The ladder and the snake again appear here. The snake is a complex symbol. Setting aside the story of Eden it has great positive connotations. Coiled round the staff of Hermes messenger of the Gods it becomes the sign of healing, The Caducean staff. In this way not only the ladder suggests a skywards journey but the snake echoes the same principle. The serpent is a symbol in many cultures for the cycle of life connecting heaven and earth.
L. Anselm Kiefer Emanation 1984
R. Anselm Kiefer Emanation 2001
Along with the many images of climbing up to heaven there are images of emanations from above. These are sometimes called comets or take the form of solidified heat such as in these lead pours but always evoking the finger of God.
L. Anselm Kiefer Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe 1984-1986.
R. prop from the studio
This work from our collection carries many layers of meaning each of which contains its opposite. The propeller is a means of flight and therefore of transcendence yet it is made of lead and cannot take off. Like the Bachelor�s machinery in Duchamp�s Large glass it is doomed to fail in its mission to transcend the horizon. I will return to this at the end if we have time for more detailed discussion.
The propeller, planes, rockets ladders, snakes and eagle wings all appear in this context throughout Kiefer�s work.
L. Anselm Kiefer High priestess 1989
R. Anselm Kiefer High priestess 1989
Kiefer continued to make books but they became more and more material. The pages became lead and clay, hair, snakeskins, vegetable matter, ash and even his semen joined photos and script. In 1989 he created a library for them and called it The High Priestess.
L. Anselm Kiefer books in progress 1989
R. Anselm Kiefer books in progress 1989
Kiefer is fascinated by the power of books and by making them in lead he symbolically protects them from the threat of nuclear devastation that might still be the modern equivalent of the burning of the Alexandrian library. Beuys made piles of newspaper which he claimed would be the only true history of our culture in years to come and he also described these piles as charged cultural batteries. There are many such echoes in Kiefer�s art.
L. Anselm Kiefer The studio at Buchen 1989
R. Anselm Kiefer The studio at Buchen 1989
Kiefer bought an old brick factory near to his main studio. It was a vast labyrinth with rows of kilns on the ground floor wooden racks on several floors above for drying the bricks and water tanks below ground in case of fire. To one end there is a great clay pit that supplied the raw material for the bricks.
L. Anselm Kiefer The studio at Buchen 1989
R. Anselm Kiefer The studio at Buchen 1989
Kiefer stored his vast collection of herbs and other materials such as bone, snakeskin and sponges in the wooden racks. This collecting is akin to the accumulations of Beuys� Stag hunt.
L. Anselm Kiefer The studio at Buchen 1989
R. Anselm Kiefer The studio at Buchen 1989
His idea for this place however was to make it one vast integrated installation as a foundation for his posterity. He had seen what museums and dealers did to the fragments of Beuys and wanted to have at least one place where his work could be displayed as he intended.
Mid way into this project Kiefer�s life began to change. He was coming to the limit of the German question having spent 20 years on it. He wanted to spread out to wider issues but felt constrained by being there. His domestic life also changed painfully at this time.
L. Anselm Kiefer Melancholia 1991
R. Anselm Kiefer Melancholia 1991
Many of the works at the time tend to melancholia. He was forced to sell the studio and the brick factory to meet his obligations. The factory he managed to preserve as an installation by selling to one man who still lives there but he has cleaned it up and it is no longer what Kiefer intended.
L. Anselm Kiefer Liliths daughters 1990
R. Anselm Kiefer Adelaide ash of my heart 1990
Towards the end of his life in Buchen Lilith plays a large role. Exorcising his wife�s memory perhaps. Adam�s first demonic wife, Lilith brings all kinds of plagues into the world in her disappointment.
L. Anselm Kiefer Women of the revolution 1992
R. Anselm Kiefer Women of the revolution 1992
This installation was made for the Sydney Biennale in 1992 It is one of the last major works he completed before his departure. It is a theme he picks up again in France three years later in the Women of Antiquity.
L. Anselm Kiefer Women of Antiquity 1998-2000
R. Anselm Kiefer Women of Antiquity 1998-2000
They are images of strong women turning the Lilith story around to celebrate women�s roles as instigators of change and pointing out that they have often been demonised by male dominated history; Lilith, Pandora, Eve�s episode with the serpent and on into historical antiquity and modern politics. Between this time and 1995 Kiefer spends several months each year travelling in Mexico, China, Australia and India soaking up other landscapes and cultures escaping from the prison of German history.
L. Anselm Kiefer Twenty years of solitude 1991
R. Anselm Kiefer Twenty years of solitude 1993
He made few works between 1992 and 1995 except to tidy up some outstanding problems.
The studio had always had hundreds of unfinished or failed canvases stored awaiting the chance to cut and paste elements into new configurations, something he constantly did. However under the terms of the settlement his wife could claim any works remaining in the studio. He took canvases, drawings and photos that he considered unsuitable for exhibition and made them into installations thereby ensuring they could never be broken up and sold individually.
L. Studio at Barjac
R. Studio at Barjac
In 1993 Kiefer began moving into a new studio in the South of France
It takes two years to make this place workable but by 1995 he has found new peace of mind and absorbed enormous energy from his travels to begin an even more ambitious foundation. He is building new spaces here in an explosion of energy and ecstatic vision. The land is now covered with glasshouses and other buildings connected by tunnels in which he is making permanent installations.
L. Studio at Barjac
R. Studio at Barjac
He is growing his own giant Japanese sunflowers that feature in both the paintings and the installations.
L. Anselm Kiefer Sol Invictus 1996
R. Anselm Kiefer Sol, Invictus 1996
Unlike Vincent Van Gogh Kiefer waits till the end of the season when the flaming yellow turns to a vortex of black seed. The great black heads appear as an after image of the light of the sun and the scattered seeds form dark galaxies in the heavens. Both these artists describe the power of the light and demonstrate the dangers for mortal men who aspire to transcend the material world by approaching too close to the source.
L. Anselm Kiefer The Famous order of the night 1997
R. Anselm Kiefer Cette Obsure Clarte qui tombe des etoiles 1996
Kiefer�s dark galaxies are made from the seeds scattered by the flowers in an echo of the sprinkling of the artist�s semen in some of the books.
In these two paintings the artist is lying below the swirling night sky as if he has been seeded there himself or is he dreaming it into existence or just soaking up its power.
The artist�s fascination with the void returns us to Klein and perhaps even to Kapoor whose void fields honour Klein�s project.
L. Anselm Kiefer Void in a poppy field
R. Anselm Kiefer Cowvoid
These two works are experiments that are not really working. I first saw the poppy field and Kiefer had built a big black box behind it to try and get a Kapoor or Turrell effect. I suggested to him that you could never make a void in a representation that would work as it does in a rock. Kiefer however has never heard of never and suggested he try a cow since that was already funny. Then he actually did it and he has exhibited this work. Instead of a void box he substituted a painted sky at night. This works much better but is still odd.
Many of the new works seen in progress here are based on the ideas of the Philosopher Robert Fludd. Every plant every thing on earth has its equivalent star in heaven.
L. Anselm Kiefer details of Star paintings after Robert Fludd
R. Anselm Kiefer details of Star paintings after Robert Fludd
L. Anselm Kiefer details of Star paintings after Robert Fludd
R. Anselm Kiefer details of Star paintings after Robert Fludd
L. Anselm Kiefer Glasshouse
R. Anselm Kiefer Glasshouse
Throughout the domain of his new studio you come across buildings and installations. Here is a glasshouse built to house giant sunflowers painted white. Elsewhere tunnels lead under the ground to dark lead lined vaults half flooded and illuminated by a single weak bulb. Climbing up concrete stairs leading away from this underworld one is blinded by the Provencal light flooding into a Cathedral sized studio or a glass house with a giant lead emanation hovering over an indoor lake.
There is a strange resonance between these labyrinths and the old brick factory but the atmosphere has lightened dramatically.
Anselm Kiefer Glaube Hoffnung Liebe 1984-6
Marcel Duchamp Large Glass 1915
6. L. Anselm Kiefer Glaube hoffnung liebe 1985-6
6. R. Marcel Duchamp Bride stripped bare by her bachelors even. The large glass 1915-23
The first major work I pursued was a painting by Anselm Kiefer. In those days he was not prolific and his only dealers; Anthony d�Offay, Marian Goodman and Paul Maenz were unable to help with a major painting. I contacted Kiefer directly and he invited me to visit him in the studio, he made it clear that he would like a work in Sydney but wanted me to visit him at least 3 times to make sure we understood each other and that I got the right work. I did this between 1984 and 1986 and it was the most wonderful way to make an acquisition. I learned a great deal about myself let alone about the works of Kiefer.
One of the strange things that I saw was an uncanny parallel between this painting that I finally bought and Duchamp�s large Glass. I first saw it as the bottom panel of a vertical triptych, in the top panel he had painted three windows and below it was only the sea and rocks. He described the windows as a female passage but acknowledged the contradiction of the Apollonian form of the windows. I suggested a parallel with Duchamp�s lingering veils but he quickly dismissed the idea.
The next time I visited the propeller had appeared and the windows had gone � I resisted the temptation to suggest the bachelor�s chocolate grinder! None the less Duchamp�s horizon (also known as the gilled cooler and the bride�s garment) is precisely at the heart of the Hiedeggerian aspect of Kiefer�s work and the propeller is a failed attempt to transcend it. Kiefer later acknowledged that he had spent some months in Philadelphia Museum during the time he was working on the painting and Duchamp must have unconsciously found his way in.
| 
