There are no rules... that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about.
Frankenthaler
Kiefer & Rembrandt: Rijksmuseum Inspires Anselm Kiefer to Create a Work of ArtAnselm Kiefer, La berceuse, 2010
It was during one of my last visits to het Rijks before its new renovation while building, construction was still on going. The big attraction always is de Nachtwacht 'the Nightwatch' not necessarily my favorite but that's besides the point. This Kiefer installation had received much press, not all of it favorable. I loved it. The sheer audacity to use these dried sunflowers and rickety old chair opposite the greatest work of art is astounding. Breathtaking to look between the glass cases of la Berceuse and see the Nightwatch is almost shocking.
Homage to van Gogh's sunflowers while in a sense ignoring Rembrandt in front of him. But is he?
Masterfully and ingeniously done. I think that it was a very smart and inventive move. Marking Kiefer' own presence in the midst of the giants of the Dutch masters in the hallowed halls of the famous museum.
Anything other than a Kiefer would have paled in comparison.
AMSTERDAM.- One of Germany’s most well-known and influential artists, Anselm Kiefer, was invited by the Rijksmuseum to create a work of art inspired by The Night Watch. The result, the spectacular La berceuse (for Van Gogh), for which he was given complete free rein, will be on display in the Rijksmuseum’s Night Watch Gallery in the Philips Wing from 7 May.
Born in March 1945, just before the end of the Second World War, Anselm Kiefer has always been fascinated and inspired by German history. His work, which is shaped by historical, mythological and spiritual themes, is always large-scale and uses materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead and dried plants. Kiefer’s work is exhibited in all major modern art museums worldwide.
Kiefer’s artwork for the Night Watch Gallery belongs to a long tradition among artists of creating work inspired by their predecessors. The collection of the Rijksmuseum, the museum of the Netherlands, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for such work. In this dialogue between the past and the present, artworks are seen in a new light and given new meaning.
Kiefer is no stranger to the Netherlands. Having visited Dutch museums early on in his career, his first exhibition – composed by Rudi Fuchs – in the Van Abbe Museum in 1979 represented his international breakthrough and prior to that, in 1974, his works were exhibited at Galerie 't Venster in Rotterdam. Dutch collectors were the first to purchase his work. Kiefer’s last exhibition of recent work was in 1986 in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The collections of the Van Abbe, Boijmans, Stedelijk and Groninger museums all include works by Kiefer, but no new works.
Photographs by Anton Corbijn will be exhibited during the Kiefer & Rembrandt exhibition. Corbijn photographed Anselm Kiefer in 2008 in his studio in the south of France. On display in the Acquisitions Hall from 7 May to 4 July
Shades of Blue
The water of the Bacalar Lagoon, on the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is as pure as glacial ice. It contains scant organic material: some of its oldest inhabitants are oligotrophic microorganisms, so called for their minimal diet. As a result, the lagoon puts on a spectacular display in the sunlight. It’s said that there are seven distinct shades of blue in the water, from deep-sea indigo to sunset violet. In English, Bacalar is sometimes called the Lagoon of Seven Colors; its original name in Mayan, Siyan Ka’an Bakjalal, translates roughly to “place surrounded by reeds where the sky is born.”
The intended meaning of the artist?
Picasso said of Guernica: If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.
Anselm Kiefer too rejects the idea of intended meaning, although his works abound with metaphor: I have no intended impact. None at all. Each viewer can create their own experience, their own work from what they see. It’s nice if people understand the ideas and references behind my work, but it’s absolutely not necessary.
Artist as rebel
There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.
~Helen Frankenthaler
Orpheus
"It's not accurate to say that the artist find his own theme. The theme matures in him as a result and begins to request to be expressed" ~Andrej Tarkovskij
‘Orpheus’ dwelled with me for a very long time. Rilke’s poem; Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes, is one of my favourites. How to give expression to ‘... but there in the distance, dark against the bright exit...’
that tragic moment, when, almost having reached the light and escape from the under world, Orpheus looks back...
‘Orpheus’ mixed media on clay board, Olga Everaert
Entrance
Whoever you may be: in the evening, leave
the shelter of your room where you know everything;
for your house stands at the edge of great distances—
whoever you may be.
With your eyes, so tired that they can
barely free themselves from the worn threshold,
you lift up with measured pace a single black tree
and place it before the empty skies—slender, alone.
And have made the world. And it is vast
and like a word still ripening in the silences.
And as your will grasps its meaning,
your eyes tenderly relinquish it all. . .
Thoughts
See your name as the owner of this work, and behold yourself: the artist. RMR
Picasso’s thoughts on art
Picasso wrote with glittering illumination, “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth—at least the truth that is given us to understand. . . . People speak of naturalism’s being in opposition to modern painting. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. . . . The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood, and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English—an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anybody but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?”
*Interview given to a Spanish reporter and published in translation in The Arts, in New York, 1923
“In the old days, pictures advanced toward their completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions. I make a picture—then I destroy it. . . . A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. . . . A picture lives only through the person who is looking at it. . . . There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward, you can remove all the traces of reality; the danger is past in any case, because the idea of the object has left its ineffaceable mark. . . . Academic training in beauty is a sham. . . . When we love a woman, we don’t start measuring her limbs. . . . Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of birds? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But where art is concerned people [think they] must understand.”
*Interview published in the noted Cahiers d’Art, 1935