Source: Salmagundi, No. 82/83 (Spring-Summer 1989), pp. 78-89 Published by: Skidmore College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40548048 . Accessed: 29/03/2014 09:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Skidmore College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Salmagundi. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Anselm Kiefer and the Shapes of Time BY CHARLES MOLESWORTH (for H.M. and R.B.) One of the overriding sensations generated by the Anselm Kiefer exhibit* is that of being caught in a curious time warp. On the one hand Kiefer paints with many of the attributes, such as egoistic theatricality, heroic scale, and a rough-house attitude towards materials, that are clearly and heavily in- debted to Abstract Expressionism. But just as convincingly he goes about his art with an attitude that could only be sustained by someone for whom that fabled American school of the 1950's never existed. Kiefer seems to escape from the context of Abstract Expressionism by extending it, as if none of its problems, self-questionings, and revisionary histories were at stake. Kiefer has accomplished one thing crucial to all artists, and it helps to strengthen his supporters and quiet his critics: namely, he paints as if what he does, in all its grandiosity, was the way painting ought to be done. The sensation of the time warp, however, creates a further sense that Kiefer is supported by history and at the same time contemptuous of its rigidities. The highest claim one might make for him is that he creates his own historical context, that he warps time in probably the * At the Museum of Modern Art in New York City until January 3, 1989. The show travelled from Chicago to Philadelphia to Los Angeles before closing in New York. This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions QO I 2 S li This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 80 CHARLES MOLESWORTH only way it can be warped - disdainfully. But it is not time pure and simple with which Kiefer wrestles or succeeds, it is more specifically with art historical time, that special construct that is open to the winds of change, celebrity, media exposure, and a dozen other forces even more difficult to harness. From time to time, art historical schemes return back to the histories of society and politics from which they spring, somewhat as a prodigal child returns. But is it out of duty or instinct that such returns occur? And is the homecoming the occasion of rejoicing or retribution? But Kiefer's work occurs, or at least is famously exposed, at a time when art history is back among the historical constructs of- fered on the larger canvases of society and politics. It is this painter's tribute, and his special burden, that his work raises with new force the questions of how and why art should deal with "real life" subjects, such as historical ideologies, personal will, and emotional qualities, as opposed to the formalist con- cern with purely "painterly" issues. In fact, Kiefer's art engages several issues, but they can be grouped under at least three headings: social and emotional content, visual pleasure, and technical abilities. A full response to his work, of course, would try to integrate these issues into some coherent view. Kiefer has executed several large canvases that feature cultural, historical, and mythical heroes of Germany, often posed against grand, even grandiose, backgrounds, and labelled with a script lettering that suggests, in part, the sort of hand one sees in the work of admiring school children copy- ing out the lesson of the day. One person's patriotism is another's chauvinism; one person's burgeoning nationalism is seen by someone else as incipient fascism. Kiefer, of course, fully realizes that German nationalism, since Nazism and the horrors of World War II, is not just another nationalism. So what is the viewer, especially the non-German viewer, to make of Kiefer's work in this vein? Having raised so explicitly the is- sues of historical and political values and responsibilities, what can he expect the viewer's response to be? In one painting the names and portraits of Rilke, the mystical poet, and von Clausewitz, the hard-nosed theoretician of war, among several others, are present; in a different painting, effigies (in the form This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions i li This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 CHARLES MOLESWORTH of flaming torches ensconced in an empty hall) representing Joseph Beuys, the radical artist, and Richard Wagner, the great composer and notorious anti-Semite, appear together with famous German cultural figures. In a post-structuralist, post-modern world, we might read such juxtapositions as ironic, but forgivingly ironic, as if the target or butt of the joke were not any particular person or group, but rather history it- self. If any nation or group can produce such disparate figures, Kiefer might be understood to suggest, and still call itself one people, one entity, then the boundaries of self-delusion are in- finite, and infinitely comic. But is it all a joke? Perhaps the visual pleasures of the work help us answer this question, though again Kiefer is and is not a painter who offers such pleasures readily. Indebted in part to the same impulses that produced Arte Povera, with its use of crude, "everyday" materials, the canvases are startling in a way that combines seductive textures and details with a brusque un-painterly impatience or directness. So the ques- tions return in another context. Do the dark palette and the roughened textures, the burnt-out look of the canvases and their harsh elementarity, complete with paint-encrusted hay, stretches of paint thickened with sand and clay, often on a backing of lead plating, suggest destruction and historical desolation? Or do they rather suggest some nearly silent but proud reaffirmation of a national soul, a "volkish" spirit, that survives in spite of its own self-destructiveness, in spite of un- ending brutality from both inner and outer forces, in spite of modernity itself? Kiefer's mentor was the late Joseph Beuys, and Beuys drew considerable influence from the modernist attack, elaborated by Duchamp and others, on retinal pleasure. This would account for the more or less directly "semantic" side of Kiefer. But he never allows such interest in conceptual or intel- lectual issues to overwhelm his concern with pigment, texture, and plastic values. Yet even here the issues are complicated. By using several impractical techniques, such as painting on clumps of hay and fastening blobs of poured lead onto the can- vases, Kiefer creates a curatorial nightmare. Much recent con- cern has been aired about the state of many of the works of the This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Anselm Kiefer and the Shapes of Time 83 Abstract Expressionists - Rothko's canvases, for example, have already begun to fade less than a dozen years after his death. For a painter like Rothko, whose commitment to the qualities of color approached something like a religious level, such fading represents a virtual destruction of the spiritual. If Kiefer wants a monumental art, as his sense of scale and con- tent would clearly imply, his use of ephemeral and brittle materials suggests at the same time an attack on the very no- tion of durability and a triumph over time. By using lead sheeting for the background of several paintings, Kiefer indulges in a modernist exploration of material. The properties of lead are such that it can seldom be rolled absolutely smooth, so it creates an effect similar to that of color field abstraction, where slight variation in tone and surface creates visual interest. Sometimes Kiefer scores the lead with acid, but even here there is almost a chaste result, as the corroded surface is not all that gouged or discolored. The blobs of poured lead, generally used in paintings with scorched or roughened backgrounds, are attached to the canvas by small staples; apparently the lead is not poured directly on to the painting, but added later in collage fashion. Such uses of lead might very well connote some interest in industrial techniques, a way of signaling some modern impulse at work in Kiefer's mind. But because of the softness and its interesting texture, the lead also connotes malleability and elementariness, and thus suggests a medieval or alchemical context. It is as if Kiefer were harking back to Mime, the dwarf Vulcan-like figure from the Niebelung who mans the foundry that produces Siegfried's sword. Kiefer has been quoted as saying that "sym- bols create a kind of simultaneous continuity and we recollect our origins." Such concern with origins extends beyond the semantic content to the materials themselves. The use of hay in the paintings is combined with polymer paint, emulsion, and shellac; traditional media such as oil pig- ments are not prominently featured and something like tempera is noticeable by its absence. On at least one occasion the hay connects in a challengingly literal way with Kiefer's use of landscape. In a painting entitled "March Heath, March Sand," he covers large areas in a photographic image of a This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 CHARLES MOLESWORTH landscape with irregular strips of sand glued onto the surface. The literalness here is almost comic, as if he were trying to plow up the image. As it turns out, the title refers to a patriotic tune used for inspirational effect by Hitler, and, further back, the area depicted is a locale in Brandenburg that figures im- portantly as a battleground in Prussian history. The thematics of plowing and regeneration would seem to suggest the pos- sibility of a new start, but they could just as well suggest, with typical equivocality, the penchant to plow under unpleasant episodes and the resultant irruption of unresolved destructive impulses. If the latter suggestion is dominant, then the picture could also be taken as a sort of literalized pun, representing the "real" area beneath all the associations of memory and misused history. Such literalizing of metaphors and puns occurs in the work of some Pop artists. Kiefer is perhaps as far removed from a Pop sensibility as one could be, at least at first glance. But then we remember his use of words, often for the sake of "identification," as part and parcel of the visual images, and we might recall the work of Jim Dine, or even the Magritte of "ceci n'est pas un pipe." And Kiefer's sculpture, "Palette with Wings," is a metal construction over nine feet tall, composed of a palette board (a favorite motif) flanked by a pair of wings (with an eleven foot span), and a lead snake entwined around the piece's supporting single pole. The snake is both a symbol of trouble in Eden, and a caduceus, suggesting medical health. The artist's tool can soar, Kiefer seems to tell us, but only if we admit that such soaring is either subject to corruption, or is it- self a putative cure for our fallenness. But the tone of this par- ticular equivocal conjunction has about it something like a Pop playfulness. Even the notion of sculpting a pair of lead wings echoes an aesthetic disposition that stretches from Duchamp's marble sugar cubes to Johns's "Painting with Two Balls," with its witty mockery of macho attitudes. And is the raggedness of the wings' feathers a gesture towards mimetic naturalism, or an ironic send-up of it? There is some indication that Kiefer is moving away from a narrow German focus, as recent works deal with the French Revolution and the myth of Isis and Osiris. But the latter in- This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Anselm Kiefer and the Shapes of Time 85 dulges in a literalization, as the myth of the scattered limbs of the Egyptian deity are represented by shards of porcelain scat- tered about a hug canvas and tied back to a central point by strands of copper wire. There is also the vantage point of the viewer situated just outside and a little above the horizon line. The revolution painting is titled "The Ladies of the French Revolution," and consists of five panels covered with lead sheets; mounted on the panels in a random order are wildflowers framed under glass, each named for a woman in- volved in the historic events. But as with the ironic juxtaposi- tion of German cultural heroes, here we have both Charlotte Corday and Marie Antoinette joined in the same work, denying any consistent political partisanship. What links these more recent works with the German paintings is a play with materials, a sense of historic irony, and a sense that Kiefer is developing technical skills of execution (the French Revolution work being especially impressive) under the guise of expanding his subject matter. Kiefer is an interesting artist because such questions about his use of materials continue to be asked alongside the queries about his social content and historical themes. One of the main legacies of formalism in painting and in art history was the notion that these two areas of art - matters of style and the manipulation of materials on the one hand, metaphoric or thematic or ideational content on the other - were linked in some abstract sense, though what really mat- tered was the first area. Only if the first area were accorded something like absolute primacy of aesthetic significance, would the second area be allowed a place; otherwise, opinionated, gullible, and temperamental as most of us are, our opinions, fancies, and ideas would lead us away from the purely aesthetic. While Kiefer lets us have opinions and fan- cies, he still lets us know, unlike the conceptual artists, for ex- ample, that visual pleasure is not only a noble but a necessary aim in easel painting. Another way to approach Kiefer's relation to art history is to trace through his work traditional or mythic motifs that he has himself bent to a personal expression. For example, he often uses landscape frontality in his work; the viewer is This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 86 CHARLES MOLESWORTH presented with a large expanse, generally empty. Even in those paintings that have a building, room, or other structure in them, the feeling is one of an empty expanse. The viewpoint is often just above such expansive emptiness, so that Kiefer may be suggesting that we are not exactly immersed in or trapped by our historical horizons, but we are far from being free of them in any way. He also often paints trees or ferns or flowers, even occasionally incorporating actual plants into the work. These can be seen as emblems of frailty, but also as signs of eternally self-regulating forms; in either case, they seem to serve as something of a rebuke to the orders of culture and human intention that are otherwise so dominant in the paintings. Such appeals, through traditional motifs, to the themes of domination and frailty of responsibility and detach- ment would indicate a standard humanistic attitude, though one deeply felt and sincerely expressed, that tells us we are, as Shakespeare would say, "poor forked things," simultaneously the victims and the observers of our fate. Now many of our historical schemes, and by extension our art historical schemes, are impoverished when it comes to setting up polarized dichotomies. Despite many warnings and good intentions, such polarities turn out to have no really use- ful mediating term or category that will keep the scheme from becoming mechanistic or reductive. So Kiefer may turn out to represent a continuation of formalism by other means, or else he may be hailed as a precursor of a return to painting made significant through social and historical content. It is hard to see him as representing both possibilities (even harder to see him as representing neither), because the two "parties", that of formalism and that of socially conscious art, have no room for overlap. The most cynical reading of Kiefer would be that he realizes all this but has chosen to set it against itself by subtly manipulating just enough of the stylistic markers from each camp so as to appear equally at home in both. For what does seem unavoidable is the conclusion that Kiefer is nothing if not self-conscious about style even to the point of being stylish. One of the ways that art historical schemes are drawn up is to attend to questions of skill, or rather, to try to use levels of skill, and even attitudes to skill itself, as historical markers. In This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Anselm Kiefer and the Shapes of Time 87 some fairly radical versions of such history there is even a hoped-for equation between skill and political content. This is true in other than art historical schemes, by the way. One slogan, for example, heard during the 1960's in America was that "good writing is counter-revolutionary." The equation here seems to involve a notion that pleasure can have a specific class function and a specific class identity; certain forms of frippery or a concern with variations rather than with themes, for example, might be assumed to be "bourgeois." Con- trariwise, rough externals or a thematics of disrespect, even resentment, are assumed to be proletarian, or at a minimum, anti-bourgeois. Such equations are rejected by many critics as too simplistic, reductive, or tendentious. But establishing the truth of such claims is tricky, much trickier than the all-too- ready willingness of many to discard them completely would seem to warrant. A considerable part of the excitement generated by Kiefer, and also some of the dismay, is tied to this recurrent predilection to make an easy assumption about the relatedness of technical and stylistic questions on the one hand, and ideological and political values and concerns, on the other. Kiefer's work contains a number of equivocal aspects and these make such relatedness hard to spell out. In the face of such ambiguity, many people want some resolution. One im- mediate temptation might be to argue that Kiefer, by return- ing political and social issues to painting, is ipso facto a radical artist. Another temptation might be to add that his style is deliberately rough, that it abjures not only the polished sur- faces of commercial art but also the by-now tame standard forms of avant-garde outrageousness; hence his project must constitute a truly challenging new direction. These readings of Kiefer would echo the sense of a time warp mentioned earlier, for they would implicitly suggest that he becomes truly avant- garde by outstripping the avant-garde at its own game, that is by ignoring precedent. The irony in Kiefer's case comes from that fact that the precedents he ignores are those of the avant- garde itself. As a friend of mine remarked after seeing the Kiefer show, "After post-modernism comes modernism." In a way what we might be seeing is the turning back on itself of an This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 CHARLES MOLESWORTH art historical consciousness, and that turning back results in a challenge - even a deconstructive challenge - to art history itself. If the Pop and then even more so Minimalist movements were examples of art conceived by people who knew art history but chose to mock its "truths," then Kiefer is an artist who works with and against the structures of such history. One way to understand a history that turns back on itself is to see it as a form of myth, a recursiveness that would be traceable back to a scheme from a philosopher like Vico, with his love of cycles and completions. Kiefer is certainly a mythic artist, at least in terms of much of his ostensible content. And the mythic disposition always has a tendency to mock chronological history, to see it as an inferior temporal order - "those dying generations," as Yeats said. What is there by way of motif may be there by virtue of a guiding vision, though that doesn't mean that Kiefer has a consistent or programmatic at- titude towards the competing claims of myth and history. But at the very least it would help clarify the mixture of tones, al- lowing the grave historical irony and the painterly play with materials and semantics to coexist. It would also help us see why it is possible, perhaps necessary, to regard Kiefer as both an historical and a formalist painter. This may be the clue to his political meaning as well. Most of the major political revolutionary movements have both a forward and a backward looking aspect. This may come from a desire to capture and even shape time by freezing it into a recurrent pattern. Sartre has written of how the Girondin party in the French Revolution, for example, adopted Roman values, and even wore Roman togas in their Republican as- sault on the order of the monarchy. But it is not enough to say that Kiefer must look back in order to move ahead, or that we can trust his forward lookingness to "decontaminate" or ironi- cally correct the possible ethnocentrism or racialism in his sub- ject matter. It is not enough to make such arguments, but it may be all we are able at this time to make of Kiefer's work. History, as the poet said, has many cunning corridors, and much may well depend on who is willing to follow Kiefer down his particular route. Marx's famous remark in The Eighteenth Brumaire, that men make their own history but not always as This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Anselm Kiefer and the Shapes of Time 89 they would wish, has been glossed many times. Marx used the plural advisedly, for the history any of us makes must in turn be further made or unmade by those that follow. But this ap- plies to Kiefer with something like special force, not only be- cause he seems to have an ability - or at least the desire - to make his own history as he goes. This content downloaded from 182.178.169.33 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 09:30:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions