Anselm Kiefer

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0:32Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which some of the world's leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is Anselm Kiefer, one of the world's greatest living artists. Born in Germany at the end of the Second World War, much of his work in paintings, sculptures and vast installation pieces has addressed his country's history and culture and has asked difficult questions about the legacy of fascism and conflict. His paintings, thickly layered and sometimes embellished with straw or molten lead, often depict dark rutted fields or dense forests.

1:13Kiefer is renowned for the size of his work and for his industrial-scale studio complexes in France, where he's lived for over 30 years. His work is shown in galleries all around the world, including the Royal Academy in London, which has paired him with one of his artistic heroes for a new exhibition called Kiefer Van Gogh.

1:34Anselm Kiefer, welcome to This Cultural Life. Oh, I like to be with the BBC because I look always BBC in my television in France. That's great to hear. Good to have you here with us. You were born in southern Germany in a town in the Black Forest in 1945, a few months before the end of the Second World War. And in fact, I think on the night that you were born, your town was bombed in an Allied area. We was, so my mother was going to the hospital and there was a room in the cave of the hospital because it was dangerous. The basement. In the basement I was born. And in this night our house was bombed.

2:16Can you imagine? Destroyed? Yeah. Nobody would have survived if I wouldn't have been born. You know, life and death is always combined, no? So much of your work, of course, in the years since has dealt with the physical and the psychological legacy of the war. So are your earliest memories of ruins and rubble? The time when I was born, I think I have no explicit memories. Sure, when you were growing up. But I had no Spielzeug. I had no things to play with. So I played always with the ruin on the other side of our house, you know. Because you had no toys. Yeah, no, I had no toys. And I built buildings with two floors.

2:59Can you imagine? Before I was going to school, two floors. I had the material in abundance, you know, that was fantastic. Using the rubble, the bricks? The bricks, just the bricks. And I found some wood for the floors, you know, for the first floor, second floor. And I was sitting there while it was raining. I was very happy to have my own house. You were very happy. So these are not traumatic post-war memories then? It's not traumatic. It's the contrary. I like these ruins. I still like ruins. Yes. Well, I was going to say the ruins, the imagery of destruction and ruination has recurred through so much of your work over 50 years.

3:41You know, because ruins is a beginning. It's not the end. It's a beginning of something. The end is if something stays for hundreds of years. It's the end. But the beginning is a ruin. So that imagery of ruination then, is that a conscious reference, do you think, to those childhood memories? This I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. But I think it's more philosophical. For me, ruins are the beginning of something new. You know, I destroy my paintings all the time. I destroy them. I put them out in the weather. I put them in the snow. I burn them. I put electrolysis on them. I do all kinds of things to ruin them.

4:20And then they get up again. Resurrection.

4:33I painted a long time on this painting and added layers on layers and layers. And now I go back to the beginning.

4:52Is that because something happens that you can't predict in those paintings, but you enjoy that process of change and resurrection. No, it's an enthoushment, disapproval with my painting. Disapproval, you can say this in English? Disapproval? Disapproval. I don't like it. Like dissatisfaction? Dissatisfaction. And I hate them sometimes, you know, I hate them. And I get aggressive, you know. There's a war in my head, you know. You literally, you hate the paintings. You finish a painting, or you think it's finished, and then you start to kind of hack away, scrape it, burn it. It can be one month later or a year later or ten years later that I get really, really angry.

5:34So a painting is never really ever finished? No, it's not finished. It's a process. Even when it is displayed in a gallery? When it's bought, I cannot do anything anymore. But if it's in the gallery and not bought, I take it back with me. So it's an ongoing process then? Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Tell me about your parents. What did they do? So my father was in the war. He was an officer. Not high up, but captain. The captain in the Wehrmacht. Yeah, yeah. But he was in the... As he could... He painted a lot of horses. He was very liked by the general. Painted horses? Yeah, yeah. He was a horse painter.

6:19Not like Stubbs, but... So he was in the central where they do the decisions, Generalstab. So he still had all the plans for Russia. So I still have them. Really? Yeah. All of the sort of the German forces? Not all, but some of the plans. Unternehmen, Wintergewitter, Unternehmen and so weiter. He was wounded near the end of the war. Did he ever talk about his experiences with you? No. That's an absolutely strange thing nobody talked to me about. You know, they have the Kristallnacht, how is this called in English? Kristallnacht. In 1938, no? In Germany, when they destroyed all the synagogues and stuff.

7:05And I'm sure in my town, Donaesingen, there was some destruction too. Of Jewish property and shops. Yes. But they never told me anything about this, you know. It didn't exist. But how was growing up, the aftermath of the war, the destruction, how was that explained to you and other children, what had happened? Oh, there was, it was just said, there was a war, you know. No, no, it was, they didn't speak about, and I became aware of the things when I had a disk by accident, what the Americans made. A record. A record to inform the Germans what happened, you know. and then there was voices of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and I was so touched by these voices, you know.

7:58You were, because this is the first time you realized it. Yeah, yeah. So it was an educational LP explaining to Germans. From the Americans to the poor Germans who were so horrible. Yeah, and this brought me to, then I made these actions because it's the best to do an action to conceive something. Well, you say your actions, some of your earliest works, in fact, a series of photographs called Occupations, which you made in 1969. You took self-portraits in various locations around Europe whilst wearing, I believe, your father's old Wehrmacht greatcoat and performing the Sieg Heil, the Nazi salute, which, of course, had been banned in Germany since 1945.

8:38So this was a series of illegal acts that you were performing. You've said many times in the past that what you were doing was examining very forcefully how the war was simply just not talked about in Germany in those post-war years. And the works became very, very controversial. Were they intended as a provocation? No, no, it was more naive. I just wanted to know, you know, and when you put yourself there, then you get in conversations and stuff. So it was, yeah, it was naive. Because you made these works in 69. I don't think you exhibited them for several years, maybe 74, 75. No, the first time I showed them really was...

9:21Ah, there was once a show in Montpellier. And what was the reaction? The reaction, they wanted to kill me. Were you surprised? They wanted to beat me up. A little bit, yes. But the chef of the show, of this big show, he protected me then. He understood. I remember very well the situation after the World War II, time zero. You know that German politics created this word, and that's absolutely wrong. And this is one of the biggest misunderstanding of our time, I think, because there is no time zero. You cannot cut a historical stream from one day to the other. You cannot believe that after 1945 and the Americans came, and the English, that the people changed from one day to the other.

10:16Nobody can believe that. But they tried to make believe that. At a time when the far right is again on the rise in Germany, the AfD party, do these works suddenly have new relevance, new resonance, do you think? you know today I wouldn't do this again not at all because this could be interpreted in a completely wrong way I wouldn't do that but now you know I always said the swamp it's still alive I said always I knew you cannot just have a year 45 and then it's all finished so you mean the swamp of fascism yeah that's still I said it's still there it will come up. So you made those works originally out of naivety.

11:05Yeah. Whereas now, after five decades of work, you have a better idea of how to present the world and explore the world. Now I have, I studied a lot, you know, a lot about this war, about all this. And I have now a real knowledge about it. That's different when you start with the knowledge, you know. You know, I don't know if you know the book who came out two years ago. there was something I thought I knew all. But this was even worse than what I knew before. You know, when the Russians came to Germany, and so then the Nazis, the SS, had to exhumify, exhumify, exhumify the bodies of people they killed.

11:49To burn them quickly, that they don't find it. And this, you can imagine, to do this, and then people who was in Auschwitz had to exhume them, the Jews themselves. And sometimes mothers exhume their baby. Can you imagine? You cannot imagine something more horrible, no? And this was published, I think, two years ago. I bought it, and this was really, oh. So you're still learning things about Germany's past, which is shocking you. And it's a subject which you are still there for. And you know what I don't understand in German TV, There is a lot about Hitler, you know. He's quite a star there, you know.

12:31It's too much, perhaps. But the young people don't know this. They don't look at it. You say you wouldn't make those works, those works that you called The Occupations, you wouldn't make those again today. But how do you feel about the original works when you see them? No, I think it's as it was, you know. I have no feelings about this. It's what I did. It's just what you did. so you don't feel any kind of particular artistic pride in what you were doing, the fact that they were kind of brave? No, no, I'm not pride. I just did it, you know, to know something. No, I'm not pride.

13:10On This Cultural Life, Anselm Kiefer, my guests choose the influences and experiences that have most inspired their own creative lives. And your first choice for this programme is Vincent van Gogh. When did you first become aware of him? This was when I was very young. I would say just before I was going to school, we had some books in our house, my parents. Not so much, but Bangkok we had. So I studied the book, and so it took a long time until I saw the original, but the books I studied. Which paintings of his in particular are in this book? Oh, there were sunflower paintings, starry night paintings.

13:49All these paintings. The classics, the famous ones. What was it about those paintings that particularly appealed to you, do you think? You know, I would say that I couldn't say this in those times yet, but today I think it was a combination of the things on the earth and the universe. So the relation between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. So the fields that he was portrayed. Yeah, the fields, but also the starry night. The stars above. The stars above. The starry night, yes. So this was always what I'm most interested in, this combination of microcosmos and the macrocosmos. When did you first start making art yourself seriously or start thinking that you might want to be a artist?

14:34I have a collection of, I started with three, four. My father collected it all. And with five, I was really a genius. Then you lose a little bit, you know. But when I look at my paintings at five, it was fantastic. And did your parents encourage you? Did they realize you? My father encouraged me, yeah. Because when you say he painted horses, was he a good artist then? No. He just enjoyed it? He just enjoyed it. And he became, you know, after the war he couldn't study because he was in the Wehrmacht, he was officer. But then he was a helper in a school. An assistant. He didn't study. Right. But then he became, later he became a professor.

15:16and so he was working. So you had talent from a young age and you enjoyed art. In 1963, I think when you were probably 17. You know, talent is a word I never use to say if an artist is good or not. Because talent can be the reason for bad art. Right. What do you mean by that? Yeah. If an artist is so able to do things like this, but it's no content and it's... Oh, you mean if technically? Yeah, technically. Technically they can portray something, they can paint a horse like your father could do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it doesn't mean he's necessarily a good artist. No. Right. But talent is judged, and you were judged in 1963 to be a very talented artist when you were 17.

16:07You won a prize called the John Walter Prize, which gave you a scholarship. This was even more about my writing, because I had to write a journal, and for this I think I got the prize. A diary. That's it, yes. But from what I understand, this prize allowed you, gave you a scholarship and allowed you to study Vincent van Gogh. You followed in his footsteps. You travelled to the Netherlands and to Paris and Lyon and of course to Arles in the south of France. What did you learn about van Gogh in that time, do you think? It was the first time that I saw a lot of originals. So Hogue-Wil-Louvre in Anheim, in Holland.

16:43Yes. Hogue-Wil-Louvre the park and then there was this big museum with all the Van Goghs. And I saw the first time really the originals, you know. I didn't see this before. Then in south of France, I lived three weeks with a farmer and it was so nice to give me a room. Then I could see all the subjects of Van Gogh, you know, all the things. So the subjects, the environment that he saw. I was in Saint-Rémy, I was everywhere. I made copies of Van Gogh. I made it like this. Drawings. The self-portraits I did. You have just opened a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London after a very similar show in Amsterdam earlier this year, which pairs your work with that of Van Gogh.

17:30Are all of the works that we see in the exhibition made in response to specific works by Van Gogh? Yeah, sure, sure. For all the drawings, as you will see, I made them during my travel. I had paper in my knapsack. Knapsack? Your backpack. Backpack. I had the paper, the charcoal with me, and the spray even. That's why I was... It was heavy. And I did all this, a lot of drawings. I think I did 100 or so drawings of the landscape. And they look like Van Gogh, yes. So you're quite proud of those works then? Looking back, you recognise that that was the start of your artistic career? Yes, I'm proud because I was able to copy Van Gogh.

18:17Right. It was. Even today, cornfields and sunflowers are images, obviously very familiar from the paintings of Van Gogh, but they are images that have recurred in so much of your work. Why do you return to that imagery time and time again? You know, the paintings you see now, these big cornfields, I made recently when I had to give a speech in the Tate Britain about Van Gogh. And then I thought, oh, I do some paintings for me to get in the mood to speak about Van Gogh. I have to do something to get some ideas, you know. But that imagery is so strong, isn't it? The cornfields rose stretching into the distance and then the individual sunflowers.

19:02very often your sunflowers have been destroyed or they appear to have withered and died. Also, there are paintings in which you use straw as a material on the canvas, and then often it's burned. Yeah, I burn a lot. I burn a lot because fire is a big helper. It's transformative. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fire. So, you know, fire is an alchemist. The alchemists use all fire, you know. Were you familiar with cornfields from the Van Gogh paintings as a child, or did you have cornfields and sunflowers around where you grew up? No, certainly. I lived in a village. There was fields of cornfields and all this, and they were higher than me as a kid, you know.

19:47So I can imagine it was like a forest, you know. It was very impressive, yes. Recently, the great German film director Wim Wenders made a documentary about you and your life and your work, and there are flashback scenes in which a small child plays you as a boy, and there's a scene in which he's lying in a field of sunflowers.

20:09Is that recreating a specific memory? This I did in the south of France. There I have a big piece of land, you know, some hectares. And there I grow sunflowers, by the way, with the grains of Japan, because they are taller. Oh, really? Okay. Japan makes all better. Japanese sunflowers. No, it's true. In Provence. And though I was lying underneath, and then if they are ripe, the sunflowers, they get like this. They turn. Yes. And then these sunflowers look like the firmament. It's because of black and a little bit glittering and so on.

20:54After studying Van Gogh as a teenager, you began your own drawing and painting and photography. And then you met the great German conceptual sculptor, Joseph Beuys. Did he become a mentor to you? You know, I met Beuys when I had already finished my studies, in a way, in 71. And then I met Beuys, so he wasn't beginning with me. But I think he was, I don't know if it was an influence, but I admired him, you know. I still think he's the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century. And you took your paintings that you were already making and strapped them to the roof of your car and would drive them up to Dusseldorf to show you.

21:35Yeah, because I was in the forest, in Odenwald Forest. Which is a long way away. But what did you get from Boyce as kind of a confirmation that you were on the right track? Yes, because when I showed him the photos with the Seekheil salute, he didn't look as provocation. So he said, just a good action. He said, you know. He said he looked at it from the professional point. He was also, of course, an artist trying to grapple with Germany's past. Yeah, yeah. What did you learn from him? I think it was more influence on to look at other works, you know, to get wider in what I appreciate and so.

22:23Your next choice of creative inspiration for this cultural life, Anselm Kiefer, is poetry, and specifically the work of Paul Salan, the Romanian-born poet and Holocaust survivor. And you've previously written that, and I'm going to quote you here. You say, poems are like boys in the sea, you swim from one to another, and without them, you are lost. So are your paintings very often made directly in response to poem? Sometimes, yes, but mostly not. I do a painting and then when it has a certain state, it comes some lines in my head, you know. Lines from poems? I knew once 200 poems by heart, you know, really.

23:04Now I forget them. But pieces stay still. And then the pieces come to the painting. And as I write a lot, it was a long time, big decision to make if I'm a painter or a writer, you know. Even though you thought you were probably a genius at the age of five as a painter. Yeah. How were you as a writer growing up? It was a serious consideration. In these five I had no writing. But yes, I had some success in writing. When did you first read the poetry of Paul Celan? The first one was in school. Schwarze Milch, we drink in the früh, we drink in the evening, we drink. the first poem. This is called Death Fugue.

23:45Death Fugue. And this is the most simple poem. Simple in the way of you can explain it. The aphorism is clear. Later it's different, you know. And this was the first one, but then I read more and more poems. That poem is called Totus Fugue. Totus Fugue, yeah. Death Fugue in English. And it's a poem probably reflecting on his experience of the death camp. Yeah, because he was not in a death camp, but his father, his mother, was killed. Yes. And all his life long, he had the problem that he couldn't help them. He was not going to the death camp, you know, by accident in a way. But he could have joined them if he would have wanted, but he didn't.

24:28So what does that poem in particular mean to you? Why has that one inspired you so much? Because it describes the situation. These poems proved that after Auschwitz you can still do writings poems. You know, I don't know who said this. Black milk of dawn. We drink you at night. We drink you at noon and mornings. We drink you at even. We drink and we drink. A man lives in the house. Your golden hair, Margareta. Your ashen hair, Shulamit. He plays with the serpents. He calls, play sweeter of death. Death is a master from Germany. He calls, stroke darker the violins. Then you'll climb a smoke into the sky.

25:29Then you will have a grave in the clouds. There one lies, uncrowded.

25:42This poem was easiest to conceive. But other poems, there are no more metaphors. You know, they are like the French poet. Malamé was the first poet in France, after Rimbaud and so on, where you cannot see any more metaphors. Metaphor. Metaphor. So you can say it's kind of abstraction. You cannot explain the poem. There's no more metaphor. And with Celan, in his late poems, it's the same thing. But there's one difference, that in Celan's poems, there is no metaphor, but there is a kind of metaphor because you always see through him his story. In 2022, you had an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris called For Porcelain, featuring sculptures and installations and I think 19 or 20 large scale canvas paintings.

26:43Was that show the culmination of a lifetime's inspiration by Salat? It was for all the inspiration of the big room of the Grand Palais. I liked it. the Grand Palais. It was difficult. It was when you have to do something really difficult. And so then you it's a defeat, no? A struggle? You have struggle too. Yes. Okay. This was I liked it because it was really difficult. And you say that you considered working as a writer rather than a painter. But text has recurred, of course, throughout your work, isn't it? You use lines Yeah, I'm full of these poets and things. So it's in me, you know. I incorporated all this and it comes out from time to time.