Anselm Kiefer

Surprisingly good exhibition at the Royal Academy of work by Anselm Keifer.

I say surprisingly good because from the bits I had read about the show I didn’t think I was going to like it but I did! I’m not sure I always got all the historical and symbolic meanings but on a very basic level I liked the work and found it attractive and interesting. Knowing a bit more about it added something but I felt I responded to a lot of the work without that and sometimes the slightly over ponderous explanations didn’t add anything to an attractive piece.  Any show which has a picture of Virginia Woolf in the first room must be OK even if she is drowning!

I liked the large scale works such as the attic studio works. I didn’t get all the Wagnerian references but I liked the scale and simplicity. I liked the way he painted wood and the sense of putting history in his own space.

I also liked the room of paintings of buildings of the Third Reich. Again the scale drew you in. There was a sense that the buildings had grown to represent the monstrous events and yet they were inanimate objects which had not participated.

Towards the end I liked the room of lead works set with diamonds. When you first enter the room the works look quite dull, then you see the twinkling, then you realised what they are. Finally I must mention the last room which was a giant woodcut made into almost a maze structure representing the Rhine. Great overtones of Durer.

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