ART 236 : Modern Art History

Anselm Kiefer, born in 1945, is one of the most important and controversial artists at work in the world today. Through such diverse mediums as painting, photography, artists' books, installations, and sculpture, he has interpreted the great political and cultural issues at the heart of the modern European sensibility: the connections between memory, history, and mythology; war; the Holocaust; and ethnic and national identity.

An excellent overview of Anselm Kiefer's long career. Over the past four decades, Anselm Kiefer has produced a diverse body of work in painting, sculpture and installation that has made him among the most important artists of his generation. His subject-matter ranges over sources as diverse as Teutonic mythology, history, alchemy and the nature of belief in a bewildering variety of materials.

Danièle Cohn, who has worked alongside Anselm Kiefer for many years, explains the central role the artist's studios play in his artistic process. To enter a painter's atelier is a rare privilege and the stuff of dreams, as if access to this intimate place were the key to the very act of creation. Entering an atelier allows us to see, in situ, the creative process in action, in the present; we are admitted into the space and virtually participate in the artistic act by our very presence, rather than simply observing from the outside.