Anselm Kiefer - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 12, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Gagosian Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    It is important to understand that Kiefer’s art does not form a linear progression; he returns to themes and even titles repeatedly and he always has more than one body of work under way in one or another of his purpose-built studios. There has naturally been a development in the content. As a young man in post-war Germany he gave priority to dealing with the Holocaust but this interest has expanded beyond that formative experience to embrace the history of civilizations and the nature of human consciousness. While the ideas that inform one work do not necessarily lead on to the next, certain key ideas circulate continuously…Kiefer’s choice of materials and processes embodies an allegorical approach to painting and photography, treating them as aspects of an idea rather than as a neutral way of rendering an image. He uses photography not only as a means for gathering imagery but for its indexical relationship to memory. The black and white photographic print is capable of introducing chance effects: the pooling of chemicals and bleeding of light suggest ephemeral presences. The making of photography is in effect an alchemical process and this is as important as the image itself…Kiefer continues to ‘carve’ landscapes out of material that might be thought of as paint but which include organic materials, such as shellac and traces of ash. Even in what seems to be a painting, the object embodies something of the subject and cannot simply be read as an image.
    A. Bond, Anselm Kiefer Aperiatur terra, London, 2007, pp.53-55

250

Siegfried’s Difficult Way

1997
Ash, sand and charcoal on photograph in the artist’s wooden frame.
48 3/4 x 75 in. (123.8 x 190.5 cm).

Estimate
£150,000 - 180,000 ‡♠

Sold for £132,000

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Evening Sale
13 October 2007, 4pm
London