Floor 6: Anselm Kiefer: QR Code 612

Wall Text

1981
Oil, straw, emulsion, and gelatin silver print on linen
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997

Tendrils of golden straw lit with painted flames dance across this gray canvas. As with many of Kiefer’s materials and images, straw carries conflicting associations: It suggests abundance and warmth, but is also delicate and flammable. The artist has reflected, “Plowing and burning . . . [are processes] of regeneration, so that the earth can be reborn and create new growth toward the sun.” Here, the slender bundles of straw refer to the blond hair of Margarethe, the female Aryan ideal in “Death Fugue” (1948), a poem by Romanian poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan. This work’s counterpart, Sulamith, is on view opposite.

Wall Text

1984–92
Acrylic, emulsion, and ash on canvas on lead
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1994

This painting depicts the exterior of the Hall of Soldiers in Berlin, the same unbuilt Nazi structure whose crypt is referenced in _Sulamith _(on view nearby). Here, Kiefer has turned the planned shrine to German military glory into a ruin. The canvas on which it is painted is literally burned and tattered, its underlying layers exposed like geological strata. By calling this a museum—a building designed to preserve culture—Kiefer may be suggesting the fragility and impermanence of culture, as well as its potential for regeneration.

Wall Text

1982
Graphite and watercolor on paper
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1995

Like The Museum (right) and Sulamith (on wall to left), this watercolor evokes the Hall of Soldiers in Berlin, an unrealized military memorial designed by Wilhelm Kreis, an architect who worked for Adolf Hitler’s regime. Kiefer replaces the colossal victory statue that was to stand at the end of the main hall with an artist’s palette. Mounted (or perhaps impaled) on a stick, the lonely palette could be understood as a victim—a possible reference to Hitler’s war on “degenerate” art. At the same time, it emits rays of light, suggesting the possibility of renewal through art.

Wall Text

1983
Oil, emulsion, shellac, acrylic paint, woodcut, and straw on linen
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997

This cavernous interior is modeled on the design for the Funeral Hall for the Great German Soldier, part of Adolf Hitler’s never-realized plans for Berlin. Kiefer renders the space with a blackened ceiling and, at its far end, seven flickering flames. Though originally conceived as a symbol of remembrance for fallen Nazi soldiers, the fire here suggests destruction and honors the persecuted._ _The canvas is inscribed with the name “Sulamith,” a reference to the ashen-haired Jewish woman in Paul Celan’s poem “Death Fugue” (1948). Kiefer also created a painting (on view opposite) named for her Aryan counterpart, Margarethe, described in the same poem.

Wall Text

1971
Acrylic on muslin
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1998

In one of his earliest paintings, Kiefer depicts himself in a nightgown, standing in a small clearing in a dense forest, surrounded by towering trees. Holding a burning branch, he appears at once threatening and vulnerable. Forests have played an important role in Kiefer’s life: He was raised in Germany’s Black Forest and later lived and worked in the Oden Forest. In this dreamscape, the forest serves as a highly charged symbol for German Romanticism and nationalism. The flame is another motif that recurs in Kiefer’s later works, suggesting both a sign of life and a force of ruin

Wall Text

1982
Oil, acrylic paint, resin, straw, and paper on linen
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997

The thirteen numbered clumps of straw here represent the “mastersingers” (contestants in medieval German music competitions) memorialized in Richard Wagner’s opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (1868). Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner’s work and used the composer’s ideas to support his ideal of German empire. The city of Nuremberg is also significant as a location of mass rallies glorifying National Socialism, and later as a site of war-crime trials in the 1940s.

Wall Text

1978
Woodcut, acrylic paint, and shellac on paper
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997

This work presents a grouping of German writers, philosophers, politicians, and other intellectuals whose work and lives were used to legitimize Nazi ideology and its vision of empire. Composed of bold woodcuts—a medium with a long tradition in German art—it features a range of figures, from the legendary Germanic chieftain Hermann who led the victory over the Romans in 9 CE to the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Remarking on this selection, Kiefer has said, “I chose these personages because they were obviously misused by the powerful.”

Wall Text

1985–88
Oil, acrylic paint, emulsion, resin, lead, soil, ashes, and photographs
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1989

Wall Text

1980
Oil, emulsion, shellac, gelatin silver print, sand, and charcoal on linen
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997

This work presents a historically and culturally charged landscape bursting into flames. The sand strewn across the expansive photograph alludes to the sandy soil found throughout the state of Brandenburg, a region that was once part of East Germany and that is associated with the country's Roman roots and military history. It is also the subject of "March Heath, March Sand," a traditional song from the 1920s that was subsequently popularized as a National Socialist hymn. Versions are still sung today in celebration of the area, reaffirming Kiefer's own reflections on the intertwinement and malleability of culture, place, and memory.