In Awe Of An Ambitious, Ludicrous Presence

The Age

Monday June 18, 2007

Peter Hill

Some regard Anselm Kiefer as more important than Warhol, more rigorous than Lucien Freud, says Peter Hill.

PALM trees are incredibly large when they are viewed close up, in a confined space, and lying flat on the floor. The one at the centrepiece of the astonishing Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW made me think of a beached whale, for two reasons. It was out of its normal environment, and it was almost unbelievably large. This is one component of a work called Palm Sonntag, collectively a meditation on the religious and social themes of Palm Sunday. The other component is a gridded wall of 14 glazed panels using paint and collage that continue to explore the Palm Sunday story. The narrative, however, is far from literal. We are not invited to follow a spiritual storyboard so much as stand in awe of the physical presence of such an ambitious - in many ways ludicrous - artwork.

So who is Anselm Kiefer? And why do many regard him as more important than Andy Warhol and more rigorous than Lucien Freud?

He was part of the global art movement known as neo-expressionism that rose to the surface of the art world pool in the late 1970s. Julian Schnabel in America was his equal in terms of building up the physicality of the surface of the canvas. But this was a global art movement that included Francesco Clemente in Italy, Stephen Campbell in Scotland, Paula Rego in England, Imants Tillers in Australia and Blaise Combas in France. What differentiated Kiefer from most (but not all) of his contemporaries was that his work, and its seriousness, pre-dated this movement and has built both momentum and respect since its inevitable closure.

Kiefer was born the year World War II came to an end, in 1945, in Donaueschingen in the south of Germany. Like Jorg Immendorf, who died last month, Kiefer studied under Joseph Beuys, one of the most important figures of 20th-century art who had, in his youth, been a Luftwaffe pilot.

In the lavishly produced catalogue, curator Tony Bond gives us a snapshot of Kiefer's working life over the past three decades. "As a young man in postwar Germany he gave priority to dealing with the Holocaust, but this interest has expanded from that formative experience to embrace the history of civilisations and the nature of human consciousness." And in a nod to what Rosalind Krauss today calls "art in the age of the post-medium condition", Bond says, "His attitude to making art is to use the most appropriate means to capture the ideas he wishes to convey."

While this is the centrepiece of the show, it is surrounded by equally ambitious - equally ludicrous - siblings. In another room there are two paintings that are each more than five metres long and almost three metres high. Yet "painting" seems too insubstantial a term to describe such built-up and rutted surfaces, almost like the furrows of a ploughed field that have cracked under the sun.

Anthony Bond has been waiting years to mount such an exhibition. Over that time it has taken many forms and, like an albatross attempting to fly, has never quite made it off the ground. To give an idea of the costs involved, Bond purchased a key Kiefer work for the Art Gallery of NSW titled Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe (Faith, Hope, Love) almost 20 years ago. It is constructed from Kiefer's signature material, lead, and in the centre of it hangs a real aeroplane propeller, heavy with symbolism and references to alchemy and mythology. Bond told me it cost more than $70,000 to freight this work to the gallery, and the cargo hold of the jumbo jet had to be physically altered to get the crated work on board.

Originally Bond had plans for a Kiefer exhibition that would travel to Perth, Tokyo and New Zealand, but this was stymied by costs and by scheduling. Just as it looked like the show was dead in the water, London's prestigious White Cube Gallery joined forces with Bond and provided most of the works on show in Sydney. Some have carped about commercial galleries working with public institutions but so long as these types of show continue to be the exception rather than the rule, we should welcome them.

My main criticism of the show was that it was spread across several medium-sized gallery spaces and was necessarily sampled in fragments. While it would have been dwarfed by a gallery as large as Tate's Turbine Hall, it would have been good to see it in a single, appropriate, space. And space has never been a problem for Kiefer, especially where studios are concerned. With each divorce, settlement and move to another country, this never-less-than-ambitious artist has upped the ante on what an artist's studio might be. Starting with a modest former Pirelli tyre factory, he relocated to an even bigger brick factory that was subsequently sold off in its entirety to a collector. His home and studio in the south of France now comprise 18 buildings, but this is only the beginning. Underground, he is building a labyrinth of tunnels, and above ground a series of towers cast from the interior of shipping containers. Some of these were recently exhibited in the hallowed forecourt of the Royal Academy in London. Inevitably these contemporary ruins have been compared to the stubs of September 11, while others see references in them to the Tower of Babel and those built in San Gimignano and Bologna. I asked Tony Bond why Kiefer didn't come to Sydney for the opening of this exhibition - after all, he came to Adelaide to give a lecture a few years ago.

"Kiefer rarely attends any of his openings these days, even if they are quite close to his home in Europe. All he wants to do is to work in his studio."

The Anselm Kiefer exhibition is on at the Art Gallery of NSW until July 29.