Anselm Kiefer: ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’ at Gagosian Gagosian Gallery Le Bourget presents ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’, an exhibition of four monumental new paintings by Anselm Kiefer. February 7 – March 28, 2021.
Source: Gagosian Gallery
The tension between beauty and terror, alongside the inextricable relationship between history and place, has animated Kiefer’s work since the 1970s. Drawing on the literature of cultural memory—including poetry, the Old and New Testaments, and the Kabbalah—Kiefer gives material presence to myths and metaphors. He infuses the medium of paint with startling and unconventional gestures and objects, juxtaposing it with organic and abject materials such as straw, sand, charcoal, ash, and mud. Kiefer asserts himself as an iconoclast; his paintings undergo various processes—such as being cut, burned, buried, exposed to natural elements, splashed with acid, or poured over with lead—so as to be made anew. These strategies, along with the use of materials such as lead, concrete, glass, fabric, tree roots, or burned books, create a symbolic resonance, making palpable both the movement and destruction of human life and the persistence of the lyrical and the divine.
The exhibition’s title refers to the historic peace summit between King Henry VIII and King Francis I that took place five hundred years ago in a field in what is now Pas-de-Calais, France. The conference, centered around a strategic alliance between England and France, had the goal of outlawing war between Christian nations. The alliance was considered a key event in shaping Europe’s geopolitics—until it dissolved and war broke out, a year later. While Kiefer did not begin making these works with this event or title in mind, the connection became apparent and synchronous after their completion. As he stated in a recent interview, “the title is often not the explanation of the picture,” but is rather “an allusion.” History is one of the materials he uses and synthesizes in his work, “like clay for the sculptor or color for the painter.”
Follow us on:
