I like the following site so much more:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/uploaded_images/ak47-703628.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/2006/07/anslem-kiefer-heaven-and-earth.html&h=320&w=277&sz=32&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=XF47EJWdjpR9RM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=102&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAnslem%2Bkiefer%26ndsp%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3DTSHA,TSHA:2005-13,TSHA:en%26sa%3DN
So go through this site--look at Kiefer's images but also Langley's commentary--then write how it makes you feel, what it makes you think, or why ___________?
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2 comments:
So I sat finger picking my guitar and interpreting this art, heres what came out of it:
Second Link:
At first glance at this Kiefer painting, I saw an ocean with three old fashion ships with sails and a small wooden boat sailing towards one of the ships. One of the boats appeared as though it had just been hit with a cannon and there is visible smoke. The smoke is stretching up towards the heavens and even off the picture extending towards the sky. But maybe that is just my mind trying to turn this painting into something real and something tangible.
I really like the way that Kiefer constructed this painting. I do not know that much about the art terms behind it, but it looks like a collage, the way that he painted it. The surface of the painting looks jagged and has visible edges and cracks which would be hard to accomplish with just paint alone. There is not much to the painting in terms of things to look at. The colors are dark and limited to a range of dark blues and grays. It is vague but at the same time it is very open to interpretation. For the "Heaven and Earth" theme there is obvious a visible connection between both in this painting. My favorite part of the painting is how that black line extends beyond the frame of the painting, suggesting an infinite connection between the painting and something else.
First Link:
This painting reminded me a lot of a painting that I saw by Alex Grey when I visited his art studio: http://alexgrey.com/a-gallery/8-24/dying.jpg. To me both of these paintings symbolize a connection between the mind and the idea of what is "beyond our world". There is a visible white line in the Keifer painting stretching from the man's head up into space. It symbolizes an imagination of what is out there. There is a heaven if you believe in one. The universe can be perceived in any way that one wants to perceive it.
His skin blends in with the earth and the ground and unites man with earth and with ground and makes space seem far away and distant. He is laying down for that same reason.
I liked this painting more than the second.
The first painting really confuses me, and I don’t have a lot to say about it. Actually, I don’t have anything to say about it, so I’m just going to talk about the second one, and the picture from the previous post.
So, to answer the question how it makes me feel and think of, the first painting makes me feel and think of nothing but confusion, which is why I can’t write about it. The other two make me think about concrete things, and then “heavenly”, kind of unrealistic, things. Also, at first glance I think the book with wings looks cool, but I don’t know why.
When I was trying to find other stuff about Kiefer’s art, I found a site where this woman, Deborah Horowitz, says, “Kiefer’s focus on star charts is also a means of looking back to a time when the night sky evoked the possibility of a mysterious heavenly realm and planets were strange messengers that suggested our beginnings.”
I like the sculpture that’s show the book with wings, better. This kind of relates to the commentary about Kiefer that was made. People often associate books with things that create endless possibilities for us, and what tell us about our own history and beginnings. We can escape reality and write or read about anything. I think that by putting wings on the book, Kiefer is saying something about heaven and this night sky that Horowitz mentioned, possibly something about how books have replaced the night sky as something we evoke possibilities from.
This website also mentioned a quote by Kiefer in which he said, “I’m interested in reconstructing symbols. It’s about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.”
This relates to the painting from the other post, with the guy looking up from the ground. With this painting, Kiefer is trying to send another message about books and heaven. In this painting, the man has little clothing, nothing around him, and is just looking up into the sky. The stuff looks like snow, but I’m going to assume that it’s stars, because that works better for my explanation. The man is obviously mostly stripped of material possessions and companions since he is alone, but that isn’t what matters in the picture. It matters that he is laying down looking at the stars, and you can see a faint little line that connects from his eyes to the sky, that represents his tunnel vision, and what he wants to get from this. By creating a painting like this, and then creating a sculpture with a book with wings, Kiefer is making a statement about how we learn and examine things. We learn from books, sometimes about history, or fictional possibilities, but what do we learn from “the heavens”, these wings that are on the book? The man in the painting is looking at the heavens with a purpose, possibly just to gaze for fun, but maybe he is really trying to learn something. I think Kiefer is sending the message that we should be able to learn just as much from our own night sky as from a book. That clearly seems really hard to imagine, but I guess if you commit yourself to it and let yourself learn, then you can achieve success. Who am I to say you can’t gain plenty of knowledge from gazing at the night sky alone, and with only pants on? I’ve only learned from books, or from the earth part of this, not the heaven part. Maybe that’s what I need to do, and what everyone needs to do: to put down our books, and lay down underneath the night sky, and allow ourselves to gain something from it. Overall, I think that’s what Kiefer is trying to make us do.
Langley mentions in his description, something about titling a show “Heaven and Earth” representing balancing spiritual and earthly concerns. If this is something Kiefer is doing himself by giving that show a title, then it might be all the more reason to believe that it’s what he wants us to do. This older knowledge that Kiefer speaks of is books, and we need to connect that to this heaven/night sky that we search for, and what it’s about. In order to do that we need to find this balance, and devote attention to both of these. Kiefer might be making the statement that we need to do a better job of balancing our spiritual and earthling concerns. Our spiritual concerns, as represented with the wings and the night sky painting, are often overshadowed by our earthling concerns, as shown with the book. We focus our attention on something like the book because we think it’s more real, but something like what’s our there in our night sky and heaven are thought of as less than real, but they are as real as we make them. So if we spend as much time “reading” this night sky as we do reading the book, then maybe it can become just as real and concrete to us.
Oh and on a side note--I know I said learn so many times, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t find a proper synonym to suite my needs, so I just worked learn to death.
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