At the same time - and this is where Bourgeois's revolt against myth occurs - what would otherwise be seen as a fetish object for men is deployed here as a weapon instead. Thus, by subverting the feminine into a weapon, Bourgeois is simultaneously responding to the psychic myths of Western civilization and transgressing them in an effort to posit a new model of the real.
Throughout the course of his career, Anselm Kiefer has attempted to unite myth and history through an immense terrain of entangled cultural references and pictorial techniques. In doing so, Kiefer has effectively attempted to bear the weight of our collective historical tragedies and redemptive hopes that many artists in the last forty years have attempted to convey. Few of them, however, do it so effectively as Kiefer.
This exhibition will feature an overview of Kiefer's primary thematic concerns, which include Egyptian myths, alchemy, the Cabala, the Holocaust, Exodus, the Napoleonic occupation of Germany, the National Socialist architecture of Albert Speer, as well as fascist uses of German Romantic images.
Like both Bourgeois and Twombly, Kiefer has worked extensively in sculpture. Jericho is typical of the artist's monumental approach to the medium. It comprises two large concrete towers, both of which seem to be on the verge of collapsing. The piece has been interpreted as a Modernist re-working of the Tower of Pisa. Viewers are able to step into the tower and look up through the holes that have been cut on top.
Kiefer continues his Biblical excavation in such works as the installation Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday), a...
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