Anselm Kiefer at the Centre Pompidou in Paris for five months

[15/12/2015]

 

The German artist Anselm Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1993 and is one of the most acclaimed artists on the French cultural scene. Distinguished by numerous awards and honours, he has taught at the Chair of Artistic Creation at the Collège de France. Today aged 70, Anselm Kiefer is currently enjoying double exposure in Paris with a very personal exhibition at the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand until 7 February 2016 and a substantial retrospective at the Pompidou Centre until 18 April 2016.

Before becoming the visual artist we know today, Anselm KIEFER’s primary creative drive was literary, which explains why writing and books are a recurring theme in his work, via notes, diaries, and of course his sculptural works since the mid-1960s. His current exhibition – Kiefer, l’alchimie du livre – at France’s Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand in Paris – focuses on his book-related works, which represent 60% of his oeuvre. Kiefer took personal responsibility for the way the exhibition is organised, presenting a hundred books created ​​since 1968. It has a somewhat experimental feel about it, allowing an acutely personal approach that has never previously been explored. It aims to illustrate how far the written word is central to his work, how literary, philosophical and historical references irrigate his art, revealing the influences of Paul Celan, Robert Fludd (16th century English physicist and mystic), the Kabbalah, the poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Ingeborg Bachmann (with their contributions to linguistics).

Spending most of his time between the Gard region in the south of France, where he has rehabilitated an industrial wasteland, and a former warehouse of 36,000 square meters near Paris, Anselm Kiefer clearly needs space to give free rein to his inspiration. Indeed, space is essential for the creation of monumental works like Le Langage des oiseaux (2013), an impressive sculpture (3.25 by 4.75 metres) depicting lead-metal books trying to take off, spreading their pages like broad wings, or the gigantic installation Falling stars that he created for the Grand Palais in 2007 as part of the Monumenta exhibition. That year (2007), one of his heavily loaded canvases – Lasst Tausend blumen blühen! – nearly 3 meters wide, fetched $3.57 million at Christie’s in London, an auction record that still stands. In fact London generates better prices for Kiefer’s major pieces than either Paris, Munich, Cologne or Berlin. In 2015, London sold two more Kiefer works above the million-dollar line (making a total of 9 in the past 10 years). The UK currently accounts for more than half of Kiefer’s auction turnover. Overall, his secondary market is scarce and his prices are clearly rising: + 140% since 2000. Strongly stimulated abroad by the current Paris exhibitions, 2015 promises to one of the best years in Kiefer’s auction history.

How much for a book-sculpture?

His major book-sculptures, made from a diverse range of materials, are all unique pieces created by his own hand. The majority remain in his studio and are rarely exhibited. This type of work is difficult to find, let alone acquire. The most expensive example is called Sappho, named after the ancient Greek poetess, and represents a white wedding dress in plaster with a pile of grey books taking the place of the head. This elegant allusion to the weight of knowledge fetched $494,000 including fees at Lempertz in Cologne in November 2014. Sappho was the only book-sculpture of this dimension offered at auction in eight years. With the news of his Paris exhibitions, we might have expected to see other works of this type appear on the market during 2015; however, so far nothing has emerged. When they do, they usually fetch between $350,000 and $850,000.