Anselm Kiefer at the Met Breur: PROVCOATIONS

The Anselm Kiefer (b Germany 1945) exhibit PROVOCATIONS opened today at the Met Breur.  The 5th floor of the Met Breur hosts sketches, water colors & oil paintings from his expansive career. The jest of his body of work is determined to unmine the transition years in Germany post WWII that seemed to have been lost in translation & time.  Kiefer's brilliant haunting body of work emotes desolation and destruction.  There is an overall sombre melancholy but do not directly portray gruesome brutality.  The large scale multi-panel painting "Bohemia Lies by the Sea"  (1996) is the only work you see when first entering the exhibit.  This painting is reason in and of itself to come see this exhibit.  The first appearance is deceptively lighter in mood & color palette.   It is daytime and we're place along a narrow road that is surrounded by flowers in shades of pink.  Upon further reflection you will notice there are no trees, or people present and ground alongside is muddy and overrun.  Then it hits you that this is a morose landscape of decimated lands from battles and the pink florals are referencing red poppies that have become synonymous with the lives of fallen soldiers.  Drawing closer you can find facial images that are obscured from a distance.  Kiefer is looking back at WWII in Germany and finding the barren ruins upon which future generations have risen.  Still, there is a flicker of beauty in the incandescent glitter and softer color scheme.  Kiefer wrote the title of the painting at the top which he took from the title of a poem by Ingborg Bachman (b Vienna 1926-1973).   Bachman lived through WWII, Kiefer was born at the end of the war.  Both artists express a longing for what should have been if not for the war and the elusiveness to finding solace & serenity. "If Bohemia still lives by the sea, I'll believe in the sea again.  If it's me, then it's anyone for he's as worthy as me.  I want nothing more for myself.  I want to go under.  Under - that means the sea, there I'll find Bohemia again.  From my grave, I wake in peace.  From deep down I know now and I'm not lost." (I Bachmann)