Anselm Kiefer: Art and Myth at Louisiana Museum, Denmark

Anselm Kiefer, Art and Myth
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
10 September 2010 - 9 January 2011

Anselm Kiefer was on the list of post-war artists that the museum would like to show in the large, perspectivizing format. There are many good reasons for this: Kiefer is well represented in Louisiana’s collection, and his works are unconditionally among the visitors’ favourites. In addition, the museum, with a good 70 works in the exhibition, can boast of the first major showing of his work in Scandinavia. The project rounds off Louisiana’s showings of the post-war German ‘gang of four’: Polke, Richter, Baselitz and now Kiefer.

In terms of content, Anselm Kiefer represents one of the most striking new departures in post-war Germany. And it is this activity over four decades that the museum wants to bring out: not as a narrowly chronological development, but as five demarcating themes each of which clarifies an artistic concern, where Kiefer can be said to have made a striking contribution to the discussion of central issues of the age.

The five themes:

The Artist and the Function of Art,

The Landscape as Myth,

Between Heaven and Earth,

Materials and History,

The Book.

The title of the exhibition originates in the artist’s particular insistence on the relevance of grand narratives. Anselm Kiefer uses myths that to a considerable extent absorb classical material, but which still – with the biography of the artist in mind – must be called both the myths of the age and his own myths.

Postulating the fundamental meaning of the mythical material for mankind, as Kiefer does, puts his work and thus the exhibition on a course towards dialogue with received opinion today.

ANSELM KIEFER, ART AND MYTH
10 September 2010 - 9 January 2011
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Gl. Strandvej 13
3050 Humlebaek
Denmark