The Royal Academy is currently showing a medium-sized retrospective of Anselm Kiefer’s work. You’re greeted in the courtyard by two huge vitrines containing rusting models of U-boats. But the fun doesn’t stop there.
The show begins with some of his frankly awful 1960s/early 1970s work, but then quickly gets going with his mid-1970s ‘up in the attic’ paintings.
…and then into his early 1980s work - still my favourite period.
This last one in particular - part of a humongous multi-part folding screen thing - made me want to dust off my lino-printing skills.
As time goes on, and Kiefer moves into bigger and bigger studios with better and better facilities, the works become increasingly process-tastic. You could stand for hours working out how he achieved this surface or that effect. And the great thing is that much of the slightly mystical alchemical nature of what he does is mirrored in his subject matter - or the other way round, I forget which.
Things go a bit askew in the last couple of rooms. The above photo doesn’t really do justice to the amount of gold and purple there is in some of these more recent pieces. They’re - dare I say it - pretty tacky. A gift shop idea of a Kiefer. Talking of which, the gift shop at the RA has been curated to include a number of Kiefer-esque items, including distressed-looking metal keepsake boxes. Funny in a slightly desperate kind of way. And if they don’t sell, they could always hang onto them if they ever stage a Christian Boltanski retrospective.
So in summary, if you’ve not see a large Kiefer show before, it’s worth seeing. If like me you’ve been following his work since the year dot, it’s maybe less essential (the show at White Cube in 2011 was a bit more cohesive). In either case, if you’re passing the RA, go into the courtyard and have a look at those subs. They’re fun!
