Stop and Look – Anselm Kiefer Osiris und Isis (1985-7)

An important fact about the German artist Anselm Kiefer is the date of his birth: 1945 – the last year of the Second World War. Kiefer was destined to grow up in the traumatised and guilt-ridden Germany that emerged from Hitler’s devastating war. The son of a teacher, he became an artist after having studied law and languages. The need to express the conflicting and agonising currents of thought in his time became a compulsion, and he evolved a visual language in which many contrasting themes and emotions collide. 

He was always drawn to myth, poetical and allegorical ways of bringing into focus the history and psychology of his country. The operas of Wagner were a recurring subject, especially the Ring cycle dealing with the landscape of Germany as a setting for the aspirations, careers and downfall of the German gods – not to mention Wagner’s worrying reputation as an anti-Semite. He tackled other historical symbols with equal power, as in this vast canvas meditating on the gods of ancient Egypt. 

As is often the case with Anselm Kiefer, the specific content of the message in Osiris und Isis is hard to grasp. We can only say with certainty that it is epic in its reference: it presents us with a colossal stone edifice, clearly a hugely magnified pyramid, embodying both the illustrious dead and the divinities that rule over them, and over the living as well. The brooding darkness of the heavens holds lurid signs and portents of that duality: the powers of earth and sky, in the context of an inexorable flux of history and humanity.

There’s a nebulous moon, and an oddly exact square hovering in the air – a diagram of the pyramid from the air or a projection of its geometrical essence? The only sparks of pure white in the design are extraneous – applied fragments of broken china that, by sharpening the detail of the foreground, increase our sense of being present, standing at the foot of this baffling monument. 

The sheer size of much of his work conveys Kiefer’s sense of the overwhelming importance of what he has to say. Meanwhile, the strange mixture of media that he uses, including lead objects such as models ships or the wings of birds, as well as straw (a symbol of the power of gold as well as of the force of living things), sheaves of dried weeds and sometimes items of clothing, relate his vast narratives to the elements of nature, earth, sea and sky as they recur in landscape and in history. And buried in the chaotic grandeur of his pictures, there is often a kernel of poetic delicacy and lyricism, a single wildflower, a cloud or a woman’s dress.  

How to evaluate such a mighty yet elusive creative intelligence? I can’t resist pointing to a parallel from the nineteenth century: the painter and sculptor George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) nursed similarly lofty moral preoccupations about humanity’s place in the universe and embodied them in often very large, heavily worked allegories.

Watts was hugely influential in his day, considered the greatest living artist, only for his reputation to plummet after his death. Now he enjoys some revived esteem. His greatness of mind begins to impress us again. Kiefer likewise enjoys a huge reputation today globally, and I predict that he too will endure an eclipse.

But it’s hard to believe that such a monumental achievement as his will not return to blaze brilliantly and stand as a profound lesson to mankind in the long-term future.