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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jun 3, 2019 | China Guardian | Beijing | 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2077 | $****** - ****** | The Fertile Crescent |
paintings
475 x 950 cm (187.01 x 374.02 in)
Acrylic, oil, shellac and sand on canvas
Current collector bought from London White Cube.
Karfunkelfee and The Fertile Cresent, P74-79, Schama, Simon, White Cube, London, 2009.
LITERATURE:
Karfunkelfee and The Fertile Cresent, P74-79, Schama, Simon, White Cube, London, 2009.
PROVENANCE:
Current collector bought from London White Cube.
The item is held under the bonded status, please check the NOTICE ON AUCTION OF BONDED LOTS in this catalogue for details.
Anselm Kiefer is the main representative of German Neo-expressionism and one of the most important contemporary artists. His works not only have unique influences in the Western world, but also have been spread and recognized around the world. In 1970s, Kiefer has studied from Joseph Beuys, the most significant German avant-garde artist in contemporary art, and Kiefer was influenced deeply by him in both artistic language and ideas of creation. Kiefer's works are known for their varied appearance, profound ideological and conceptual nature, and have the title of “the poet who grew up in the ruins of the Third Reich”. His works set spiritual questions towards the identity politics of Germany after the war, while he cast a perspective on the destiny of a broader human culture. His artistic creations, with far-reaching values and meanings beyond the universal depth of the national complex, have made a great contribution to the revival of European art.
The artistic concepts of Kiefer are based on a profound cultural background and historic reflections. His works often themed in the contexts of the Bible, Norse mythology, Wagner's music and the irony of Nazis. By using lots of comprehensive materials such as oil paint, shellac, steel, lead, ash, emulsion, stone, leaf and clay, Kiefer was able to construct the artworks, complete the visual narratives and broaden the expression of artworks with creativity. It can be said that Kiefer truly achieved Wagner's ideal of “total work of art” in 19th century. His artworks transformed freely between painting, photographing, installation, sculpture, performance and mixed media, with his thoughts and appeals of history, philosophy, religion and literature running through. In terms of formal expression of the picture, Kiefer combined the duel expressions of figuration and abstraction, illusion and materiality, which makes the picture full of rich symbolic meaning and mysterious exploration, together with the modern appearances.
However, the charm of Kiefer's works is far more than the visual aspect, but is to lead to the depth of history by visual representation, pointing to the most profound part of the soul. Kiefer said: “I know history well. Thus, when I saw landscapes, I can see the traces of history and wars, rather than the landscapes themselves. In that case, landscapes are not pure landscapes from my point of view.” He tried to face the darkness given by war and reminded people of the unforgettable memories by revealing the destruction of life and uncultivated land with art, which impulse the nerves of human beings. There have been comments on this: “He tried to face the horrors of the Nazi period and German history, culture and mythology, and he hoped to heal the German idealism and help him to revive.” Anselm Kiefer was the first plastic artist who has been awarded Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This award aims to reward people around the world who have made outstanding contributions in the fields of literature, science and art and committed to peace. The judges agreed that Anselm Kiefer was an artist who “forced the contemporary world of his time to face the ruinous and fleeting moral messages.”
The Symbolic Meaning of Arechitecture
Architecture is the important them of Kiefer's works. Its significance has been recognized by scholars: “Books and architecture run two parallel worlds for Kiefer; they are both powerful containers recording the history of human's wishes.” Rather than the carrier of Kiefer's reviewing history and ancient culture, architecture has become a symbol showing the irreconcilable contradiction between eternal and time. Kiefer created a series of sculptures shaped like a pyramid and a brick oven. These sculptures originated from the experience of brick piles in the brick kiln in southern India. Kiefer gave these boring bricks historical vicissitudes and traces of time. The special feeling made Kiefer explain the brick pile in different ways. The Fertile Crescent in this auction is a representative one of those, which is an epic masterpiece and a milestone in Kiefer's artistic career.
The Fertile Crescent is a giant artwork created in 2009, with 4.75 meters high and of 9.5 meters wide. It is full of grand, magnificent and dignified space fields with great visual power. In this tremendous creation, Kiefer used cloth propylene, oil paint, shellac, and sand to create a magnificent pyramid-shaped building on the canvas. Pyramid is the symbol of immortality and a monument. But the viewer couldn't link it with the functional architecture in the real objective world, so its meaning is ambiguous. Tan is the main tone of the whole picture, and the bricks structures the huge main building which filled the space of the picture. There is only one subject in the picture and Kiefer focuses on presenting the texture and the bricks. The bricks are depicted as extremely realistic, and the whole painting filled with sense of thickness as well. There seems to be nothing else in the picture except the bricks. The four sides and the top of the building appears to be full of thick smoke. According to its relationship with the shape and surroundings, the building can be recognized as a brick oven, or a destroyed factory or even a memorial. What the building is doesn't matter - it is the significance of its standing told by a symbolic shape created by Kiefer that really matters. Here Kiefer has created a spiritual monument, which visually represents a certain aspect of the human spirit. It can be regarded as a materialized display of the human spirit from the inside out, or as his historical attention toward the whole human spirit or destiny. Just as he said: “I am creating with the symbols of the consciousness and experience that are connected to us. These symbols will also trigger our constant reflection on our own thoughts.” This is a typical expression of multiple meanings in Kiefer's pictures. It can be seen that the architecture in Kiefer's works is a mixture of contemporary and history, reality and illusion.
The Aesthetic Form of the Ruins
In Kiefer's works, the ruin also a frequent theme. His love for the ruins stemmed from the physical and spiritual disaster caused by World War II to Germany. The ruins are the most impactful visual experience of war damage to society. They are effectively transformed into Kiefer's image resources. As Andréa Lauterwein said: “These landscapes, through their destructive and creative depiction, run through all of Kiefer's works.” In Kiefer's view, the ruins are a transition of material form connecting the past and the future, because he has always believed in the words in the Book of Isaiah: “Over your cities grass will grow.” As Wittgenstein said, “The previous culture will become a pile of ruins, and finally become a pile of ashes, but the spirit will hover over the ashes.” In Kiefer's works, the “ruins” have been transcended to the reproduction of the material form, becoming the unique aesthetic form of his art and the materialized spiritual world.
Art Lies in the Media
Greenberg, an art critique, came up with the theory of “art lies in the media”, which emphasized the importance of media in artistic creation. The emphasis on media is actually the emphasis on the materiality of painting. The most prominent feature of Kiefer's painting language is the use of materials. Despite the own physical properties of the material, Kiefer has put the spiritual symbols into it. In terms of this The Fertile Crescent, Kiefer boldly innovated in the artistic language in order to strengthen the effect of the ruin-like texture. In addition to the conventional materials such as acrylic and oil paint on the surface, this painting also incorporates shellac and sands. The clever use of these two kinds of heterogeneous materials in the works makes the image of the ruins more materialized, and forms a strong sense of material entity visually. This kind of realism allows the viewer to form the “ruin image” visually and psychologically and naturally integrate into it, thereby achieving the immersive effect and causing emotional resonance. At the same time, the work is not only related to nature, but also has some mysterious feeling beyond materiality, reflecting a feeling of powerful symbolic. Kiefer once said: “I regard painting as test for materials.” He added, “I feel spirits living in materials.” “When I used some materials such as straws or lead, I found the spirits of these things and I refine them and showed them to others.”
Kiefer stands on the height of German history and culture, reflecting on history through his works as well as reviewing and pursuing the fate of the whole humanity culture. He chases for the truth of the integration of history and art with an attitude of “alchemist”, seeking abstract and spiritual things through numbers of materials. He summarized diversified cultural resources and made them into the inspiration and image sources. The various image symbols are intertwined to form a complex and versatile cultural landscape, which makes his works exude a unique artistic charm. H. H. Arnason, a famous contemporary American art historian, commented on Kiefer in History of Modern Art: 80s that “Anselm Kiefer, a poet born in the ruins of the Third Reich, whose works have huge black apocalypse that the spirit of the troubadour of the new German art has risen to the culmination of glory like a phoenix. This is not only the salvation of the painting itself, but also the salvation of the artist's mournful and praised culture.”
