The softer side of Anselm Kiefer Exhibition review
By Tim Smith-Laing
Anselm Kiefer is the master, both literally and figuratively, of laying it on thick. Remarkably steady in both his interests and his methods from the late 1960s through to the present, Kiefer has been approaching an artistic achievement that is unique. Now entering his ninth decade, he has arrived at the reliable production – the perfection, even – of profundity in the almost total absence of subtlety. If this sounds like an insult, it isn’t one: as these two exhibitions covering different periods of his career show, Kiefer’s depths may be all surface, but his surfaces are all depths too.
The centrepiece of the Amsterdam show, which is hosted jointly by the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk, is Where Have All the Flowers Gone (2024), a work that shows Kiefer in monumental overdrive: symbol engines set to maximum; reference torpedoes armed and away. Heaven and Earth, the five vast canvases shimmer at their heights with gold, darkening to rust, charcoal and verdigris below. Above, a disconnected frieze of female figures strike poses ranging from a yogic forward fold to the convulsions of a psychiatric patient; below, rows of encrusted overalls – headless, handless, footless figures, marching out of the canvas towards the viewer. At intervals, cascades of dried rose petals flutter and descend, here trapped in the paint, here pooling on the floor to be trodden on by viewers. At the summit, in Kiefer’s trademark polite schoolboy hand, are the German lyrics to Pete Seeger’s anti-war anthem ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ (1955), as sung by Marlene Dietrich. In the central end panel is one of Kiefer’s favourite leitmotifs: a sapling rising from the belly of a corpse. Portrait heads of pre-Socratic philosophers prod the viewer in the direction of Kiefer’s inspiration: the Heraclitean panta rhei (everything flows).
