Overview
German artist Anselm Kiefer is one of the most important and controversial artists of the post-world war II art scene. Begining with the work he showed at the 1980 Venice Biennale, he has interpreted the great political and cultural issues at the heart of the modern European sensibility, through media as diverse as painting, photography, artist’s books, installations, and sculpture. Kiefer’s wildly expressive work receives all the space and fluent interpretation it demands in this superb high-quality production. The book’s approximately 300 full-color images trace Kiefer’s creative evolution and present his great themes in their full scope and power. The author interprets Kiefer’s art as a site where distinctions between modern and postmodern senses of representation, history, cosmology, and nature become thematic. He addresses individual works and gives the historical, biographical, art-critical, and philosophical setting for each.Synopsis
German artist Anselm Kiefer is one of the most important and controversial artists of the post-world war II art scene. Begining with the work he showed at the 1980 Venice Biennale, he has interpreted the great political and cultural issues at the heart of the modern European sensibility, through media as diverse as painting, photography, artist’s books, installations, and sculpture. Kiefer’s wildly expressive work receives all the space and fluent interpretation it demands in this superb high-quality production. The book’s approximately 300 full-color images trace Kiefer’s creative evolution and present his great themes in their full scope and power. The author interprets Kiefer’s art as a site where distinctions between modern and postmodern senses of representation, history, cosmology, and nature become thematic. He addresses individual works and gives the historical, biographical, art-critical, and philosophical setting for each.
Prudence Peiffer - Library Journal
Renowned art historian and curator Celant (Guggenheim Museum) presents an exhaustive retrospective catalog (1969-2006) of the work of prominent and controversial German artist Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945). Not only exhaustive but also exhausting at over ten pounds, this is one heavy book. Anselm Kieferreflects the artist's prodigious, ambitious, and somewhat ambiguous oeuvre. Whether works on paper, paintings, or increasingly complex sculptural installations, Kiefer's art deals with intense aspects of human experience and historical memory, including his native country's fascist past. Sumptuous reproductions abound (300 full color), elucidating the artwork's haptic, collaged surfaces. After taking in Celant's dense introductory essay (which could use paragraph breaks) and the book's 11 interviews, one may wonder what more could-or should-be said, especially considering previous monographs. With an extensive bibliography; owing to the prohibitive price, this is recommended solely for art collections.
Editorials
Library Journal
Renowned art historian and curator Celant (Guggenheim Museum) presents an exhaustive retrospective catalog (1969-2006) of the work of prominent and controversial German artist Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945). Not only exhaustive but also exhausting at over ten pounds, this is one heavy book. Anselm Kieferreflects the artist's prodigious, ambitious, and somewhat ambiguous oeuvre. Whether works on paper, paintings, or increasingly complex sculptural installations, Kiefer's art deals with intense aspects of human experience and historical memory, including his native country's fascist past. Sumptuous reproductions abound (300 full color), elucidating the artwork's haptic, collaged surfaces. After taking in Celant's dense introductory essay (which could use paragraph breaks) and the book's 11 interviews, one may wonder what more could-or should-be said, especially considering previous monographs. With an extensive bibliography; owing to the prohibitive price, this is recommended solely for art collections.
—Prudence Peiffer