Anselm Kiefer - White Cube, Bermondsey

Anselm Kiefer, Rorate Caeli Desuper, 2016

Anselm Kiefer: Walhalla is at White Cube, Bermondsey until 12 February 2017

Kiefer’s big themes – German history and mythology, creation and destruction – are fully present in this hugely ambitious show which summons both the Walhalla of Norse myth - the enormous hall to which the dead battle-heroes, chosen by Odin, were led by the Valkyries -  and the 19^th century Walhalla, the marbled-monument to Germanic heroes created by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. However, in place of the gold of myth and the splendid polished marble of Ludwig’s neo-classical temple, Kiefer’s Walhalla is in the colours of concrete and lead.  

Kiefer has transformed the central corridor of White Cube’s huge Bermondsey gallery into a bleak, gloomy, dormitory of steel beds made up with lead sheets and pillows. In the galleries leading off the corridor are sculptures, vast paintings and installations – one, installation, Arsenal, replete with giant lead books fills an entire gallery; the paintings, made of oil, acrylic, emulsion, clay and lead are of ruined concrete towers in a scarred landscape under apocalyptic skies.

Astonishing – a Gesamkunstwerk.

Listen to Kiefer interviewed about the exhibition on Radio 4’s Front Row; read reviews by William Cook, Emily Spicer, Caroline Elbaor and Jonathan Jones.

Listen to Wagner’s Entry of the Gods into Walhalla from Das Rheingold.
See also blog entries on Kiefer's 2014 RA exhibition here and here.
Click on images to enlarge.

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 1992-2016

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 1992-2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Sursum corda, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Sursum corda, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Arsenal, 1983-2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, San Loreto, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, installation view

Anselm Kiefer, nubes pluant ustem, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, nubes pluant ustem, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Gehäutete Landschaft, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Gehäutete Landschaft, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, installation view

Anselm Kiefer, from Walhalla, 2016

Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 2016

Anselm Kiefer - RA: Annenberg Courtyard: Velimir Khlebnikov: Fates of Nations: The New Theory of War. Time, Dimension of the World, Battles at Sea Occur Every 317 Years or Multiples Thereof, Namely 317 x 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 . . . . . . . ., 2011-14

Selected images of Anselm Kiefer's installation - Velimir Khlebnikov: Fates of Nations: The New Theory of War. Time, Dimension of the World, Battles at Sea Occur Every 317 Years or Multiples Thereof, Namely 317 x 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 . . . . . . . ., 2011-1 - in the Annenberg Courtyard in front of the RA; the installation is part of Anselm Kiefer, a wonderful exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts until 14 December 2014 - see also blog entry below. (Click on images to enlarge.)
The work  is described, by the RA, as follows:

Anselm Kiefer often dedicates his works to intriguing figures of the past, be they poets or philosophers. This piece is one of a number of works emerging from Kiefer’s ongoing exploration of the Russian Futurist avant-garde writer, theorist and absurdist Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922).

After years of study, Khlebnikov concluded that a major sea battle took place every 317 years, or multiples thereof. Kiefer celebrates this heroic and ludicrous activity with a work that is both monument and anti-monument. Measuring almost 17 metres in total and consisting of two large glass vitrines, Kiefer creates a transparent, reflective sea-scape in three dimensions that calls to mind the Romantic sublime of painters from JMW Turner to Caspar David Friedrich. Kiefer uses the frames of the vitrines to stage a mysterious drama, in which viewers, seeing each other and their own reflections, become participants.

Anselm Kiefer - Royal Academy of Arts

Anselm Kiefer, The Language of the Birds, 2013

Anselm Kiefer is at the Royal Academy of Arts until 14 December 2014.
It is a pointless exercise (but not unenjoyable) to argue the toss about who might be the 'greatest living artist' - but, for my money, Anselm Kiefer is a contender. 
This exhibition at the RA promises much (see Rachel Cooke's review: only with the help of a blindfold would you be able to wander the Royal Academy’s stupendous retrospective of his work and leave feeling anything less than drunk with amazement). Kiefer is nothing if not ambitious both in terms of physical scale and his deployment of materials (lead, steel, straw, clay, copper wire, wood, seeds, sand, ash, oil paint...) and in the cultural richness of his themes. Born in 1945 Kiefer's preoccupation has been confronting the trauma and guilt of Germany's Nazi history - a history which for the post-war generation was effectively suppressed. Kiefer draws on references which include German Romanticism (Caspar David Friedrich), mythology, the Kabbalah, Nazi architecture and the poetry of Paul Celan whose parents perished in Nazi labour camps and who was himself interned. This is serious art. My ticket is booked.
Read reviews by Rachel Cooke, Waldemar Januszczak, Alastair Sooke, Sebastian Smee, John-Paul Stonhard,and Jonathan Jones; read accounts of Kiefer's astonishing 'studio' complex by Michael Prodger and Mark Hudson. (Click on images to enlarge.)

Anselm Kiefer, Black Flakes (Schwarze Flocken), 2006

Anselm Kiefer, Interior (Innenraum), 1981

Anselm Kiefer, Nothung, 1973

Anselm Kiefer, Operation Sea Lion (Unternehmen Seelowe), 1975

Anselm Kiefer, Osiris and Isis, 1985-87

Anselm Kiefer, Velimir Khlebnikov: Fates of Nations: The New Theory of War. Time, Dimension of the World, Battles at Sea Occur Every 317 Years or Multiples Thereof, Namely 317 x 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 . . . . . . . ., 2011-14