An Interview with Anselm Kiefer, Iconoclastic Alchemist

Anselm Kiefer has been making art since he was five years old. He is now 80. One of his monumental paintings weighs 1.3 tons, another measures more than 13 feet by 36 feet. His mediums include emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, tar, gold leaf and the green of electrolysis. He torches works and blasts them with water. He’s currently working on paintings of nymphs, female nature spirits from Greek and Roman mythology, not yet fully formed, wingless, ethereal. Kiefer told me he’s working with hundreds, though there are many more. He sets himself up to be continually surprised, and his process and curiosity are built for that. He delves into research, writes every day, reworks old paintings, reads constantly and stays wide open.

The thing that struck me most in our interview was his willingness and desire to explore any subject: quantum theory, talent and genius, poetry, materials, painting versus writing. He is alert, ever present, intent on the conversation. His focus is to learn; his modus operandi is to be surprised. Reading his notebooks from 1998-1999, you’re struck by the sheer velocity of his mind. In them, he addresses philosophers, alchemists, poets, his laptop, other painters, his work, the frieze—”is not self-contained…it extends into future times and comes from equally distant past times…when you paint a frieze, you clip yourself onto the cable of time,” the bicycle—”a form suited to olden times…with the wave-like motion of riding on the undulating street…the romantic’s tool,” the night sky, “an ancient internal knowledge.” He continually asks himself questions. When painting, he asks, “Is it always silent, or even present, when you can tap into the flow? Into which flow? Which movement? Perhaps the movement of molecules or atoms in general?” In his notebook, you’re traveling with Kiefer’s relentless, agile curiosity into everything. Our interview traveled just as voraciously. It was thrilling.

It took place on Zoom, with Kiefer in his vast studio outside of Paris. “Mind if I smoke?” he begins, and we laugh. He was smoking a fat cigar. “No, I like it,” I say, adding that I once smoked but stopped. “I stopped once, too,” he says, “and then I had to give speeches in the Collège de France. And after a year, I had no more ideas, so I had to smoke.” I ask him what he did that day—“From 6 in the morning, I was in the studio. I had lunch, took a siesta. I work, and when I have done something, and someone wants an exhibition, I say, okay, yes, okay. I’m working on nymphs now, a very, very large theme. All the famous painters painted nymphs.”—and then I tell him I’ve been reading his Notebooks, Volume I.

“Yeah, I’m not so happy about them,” he says, “because I told the editor we have to cut it in half, minimum, and he didn’t. Because you know I write every day, but I don’t want a book. My journal has 72 volumes now. I was very, very young when I started writing them.” What follows is an abridged version of our conversation.

In the notebook, you question yourself: Should I write? Should I paint?

I still have a bit of a problem in that I can’t decide if I want to write or if I want to paint. You know, there are famous painters like Picasso who wrote books that you can’t forget. When I was 16, I won the Jean Walter prize for my writing. It gives you some kind of encouragement. So from then on, I was always hesitating. But it’s very different because when I paint, mostly I am happy. I do discriminate, but when I write, I just write what comes to my mind. I don’t construct something. Writing is a discussion with myself, how I should continue if this painting is good or shit, and all these things. I speak with myself.

Reading the notebook and looking at your work, I feel there’s a lot of humor and levity. Buoyancy. In the Wim Wenders film, you are dancing in your studio, making things, whistling on your bicycle, pouring lead, torching your paintings.

I think it is a dance. Nietzsche said he is writing like dancing. I’m dancing, sure.

Here are these old alchemists trying to make gold out of lead, which you are physicalizing through your body, and the dance, into art.

You should come to my show next year in Milan. About woman alchemists, [“Le Alchimiste” at Palazzo Reale]. There are many; I chose 38 from Italy, England, Germany. They didn’t publish in their own names. It wasn’t good that woman publish, you know, such nonsense.

Talk about the dancing, the playfulness when you make work. Improvisation. So many talk about the heaviness of your work.

Most of the time, I am surprised by what comes out. This is about humor–when you wait for a joke, you know? Spice. You’re in the studio, you’re improvising with the materials. I put the paintings on the floor. I pour color or shellac on it, and then it’s always surprising what comes out. Different things are going on, and they combine themselves and I look at them and choose what I want.

Alchemy. Even in your sleep, I’m sure you’re doing it. Do you dream about your paintings?

Definitely. But more often it’s a nightmare. I have no talent, you know. There are two categories of painters. There are some who have talent, like Picasso. Or Manet. It’s very hard for me to paint. For the moment, I do a lot of nymphs, and it’s really difficult to do a portrait. But I go on, I do it, I do it. You know, talent can be a big danger. There are a lot of painters who are fantastic, and it’s boring. You can’t have genius without talent. Einstein said, “I’m completely blurred.” So he goes like this: I try things, and sometimes sometimes something comes out.

You’re continually going between construction and deconstruction, a sense that you’re reaching for something but don’t get there, which is why you make the next piece. Maybe the next piece I will get there.

There’s this famous book by Balzac, Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece). There’s someone who paints, and paints, and redoes it, and redoes it, and at the end gets crazy. I’m not crazy, not in a clinical sense. (We laugh) I’ve been painting since I was five. The childhood drawings. There I was a genius, I can tell you.

Let’s talk about the Wim Wender’s documentary. Do you like it?

I like it. I was surprised because he asked me: What do you want to see in the film? I said, I don’t tell you anything; I want to be surprised. I did nothing. I was just going from one point to the other. I was not involved in the film. I think it’s good.

Many people talk about the scale of your work.

They never have the full thing, you know? I do little works. I do watercolors. I’m master of the small format. There’s a show now in Germany. And I had a show with Larry [Gagosian] in New York, mainly with watercolors, “Transition from Cool to Warm.” I do books, too—watercolors in pages of books.

Does [the poet] Paul Celan still factor heavily in your life and work? 

Sure, sure. He made poems at the end of his life that are so abstract—it’s not the right word. You cannot interpret them. You always feel his personal fate. The fate of his people, of his Jewish. You can feel this in any poem. And you cannot explain them. You feel them. You know, there’s this poem, Todesfuge (Deathfugue), we drink mornings, we drink, we’re drinking. It’s all allegorical. There are other poems. I read them from time to time, and I always have another feeling, not only feeling, another kindness, another discovery. I stopped writing his poems in my paintings, but they’re always present anyway. It’s still in me, sure. I also discovered Gregory Corso (one of the Beat poets). He’s in the show in St. Louis now. [“Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea” at the Saint Louis Art Museum]. Years ago, when I first visited Saint Louis, I went on a small boat ride along the Mississippi River. I saw the locks and was so impressed. The elderly woman I went with told me to sit down, and said “This is America.” But it was not nationalistic, she liked the river so much. I also was interested in rivers because I grew up on the Rhine. This show makes a connection between the Rhine and the Mississippi rivers.

Did you swim in the Rhine as a child?

No, it’s very dangerous. Because of the strudel.

You mean eddies? I like strudel better.

You can eat strudel and die in it. Christmas, you can eat strudel. You should not fight against the strudel, not at all. You’re driven down and then you come up, hopefully.

As you well know, it’s a mess in the States and pretty much all over the world. Your work is penetrating that. Your work is timeless, but do you feel that you want to address what’s happening now?

It’s always in. I read news, I look at TV, I’m well-informed, I read books about politics, about history, and automatically I’m always in. I don’t have to decide ‘today, I make a political’ work because it’s always there. When I was young, I did pictures with the Hitler salute (saluting a tree, a mountain, etc.), but it was not political. It was because there is some enormous hidden… what, I don’t know. It was something I felt. I have to know what was there, because they didn’t tell me what happened. In school, we had one week of Hitler. One week! We had three weeks of Alexander the Great. So I studied a lot about this time. First, I was impressed by these voices of Hitler, Goebbels, Goring, this theatrical stuff. I had this disc from the Americans to educate the Germans after the war. This record was the first access to this time. And I’m still discovering more things. Recently I had this book, two volumes, Aktion 100, about when the Russians came to destroy all traces of these crimes. They had buried a lot of these Jews, and they took them out and burned them. It’s so unheard of. And the mothers dug up their own babies from the earth. Can you imagine? It can be an exaggeration, but no, there came even more than you thought, more outrageous, more horrendous. Can you imagine this? A mother or father takes out their own child?

So much of what people do to other people is unbelievable. It doesn’t stop.

I would say the men. [Pointing to his head] is wrong constructed, you know. It doesn’t stop. I have a feeling it starts again. The human brain is badly, badly done.

The natural world seems to be so much a part of your being.

You know, I think that plants and rocks have a consciousness. My studio is outside of Paris (Croissy-Beaubourg) but I have another place that is now a foundation, a studio estate that I built (La Ribaute, 100 acres in the village of Barjac in southern France). When I miss nature, I go there. I was working there from 1991 to 2007. I go from time to time. I live and work in my studio that’s in an industrial area. When I do a show, I create the museum spaces in my studio. I put all the paintings in.

You are an iconoclast, shattering symbols, images, history, belief. The tyranny of belief holds everything in place, and we keep repeating.

It’s all more difficult than we can imagine. The quantum theory. I don’t understand it completely, but you feel there’s so much behind. It’s so much more complicated than you can even imagine. They want to combine the relativity of Einstein with the quantum theory, but it doesn’t go together. It doesn’t work. Einstein wanted to find the formula for the macrocosmos and the microcosmos, but it’s completely different. We’re composed of these particles from 10 to the minus 36. Composed of so many little, little particles, and they’re finding even more little particles.

Many focus on your grand paintings—the size, the gigantic scale. It feels like you’re working big to get to the small, the finer details. 

It’s easier working big. This is my temperament. I work with the space. Even if it’s 9 meters high, then it’s a lot of details. There’s a lot of literature.

You’re not working big to be big.

Nope. I feel so small. We’re lost. If you want to be big, then become Putin, a Putin. It’s a problem of grandness. Of ego. They are not philosophers, you know, otherwise they would know we are small. Very often, I have disasters. Desperate. I want to do the chef d’oeuvre, you know.  I want it. The masterpiece. But every day, or every week, I get to prove that I’m not. Then I put the painting in a container for 5 years, 10 years, and then later I take them out again. I have many, many containers with paintings here. I’ve never shown because I hate them. But from time to time I open a container and take some out and I continue. I put them on the floor. I throw things over it, and then it’s another emergence, something new, something different.

Do you think about the future?

Nope. I think about the present, what is in front of me. But I’m not happy. And then I have to resolve it. I have to change it, I have to do something. I’m in the present. I hope to be in the future, I hope, but I don’t go. I cannot go in the future. I hate mine. I can tell you what I wanted when I was young. I wanted to be the Pope. It was serious, you know. The Pope for me was the ultimate. But then I found out it wasn’t realistic. After the Pope, I wanted to be able to do a painting like the asparagus of Manet.

And Van Gogh? He was an idol of yours when you were young. At 18, you traveled to the places he lived and worked. Walking in his footsteps and sketching, following his journey through time.

He is an example of a great painter without any talent, you know. Only the last three years he got really great. But he didn’t give up. He didn’t give up. His last paintings are great paintings. They are fantastic and he showed me how you can get some results if you don’t give up. He wanted a group of painters around him, like Gauguin. It was a big mess.

Do you ever want to be with a group of painters?

I know some of them, but it’s more a dream than a reality because I’m always in my studio. I have a community in my head. I come to the studio and I have around 10, 15 unfinished paintings and I go from one to the next. And I go on, go on, go on.

The fantastic green in your recent paintings, how do you make that? Are the materials you work with toxic?

Sure. I work with lead, tar, shellac, ash, all kinds. Melting the lead down is very quick. The electrolyzing process is how I get the green color. In a big pot of salt water you put on one side copper and the other side lead and then the metal gets ionized. The copper stays on the bottom and the residue is green. I learned it in chemistry. I tried it first with little batteries. I put sediment of electrolysis on paintings, and the paintings become corroded. I have a lot of systems to corrode paintings. You know, I worked with a lad in Germany, in the cellar without any windows. I’m 80 years old now, you know.

Addendum: Next month, my article about the Kiefer exhibition at St. Louis Art Museum will be published in Observer. I was fortunate enough to go. Standing in front of his massive paintings is an uncanny experience, at once vertiginous and yet joyful and awe-inspiring. I went through the show three times, and it wasn’t enough. He is an icon, a towering giant, an artist of the first order of business: creating continually. In his Notebook I, he wrote: “… what are you considering now? giving up painting? that doesn’t need to be considered in so decisive a manner because the decision will happen on its own, the precipitation of a decision, as in chemistry when a solid is precipitated out of a solution.” That’s Kiefer for you.