detail: Anselm Kiefer's Red Sea 2005
the creator himself
would go mad given knowledge
of the world's ignoble ways
we must assume that he is
The above haiku (for lack of a better word) is based in part on the following quotation from the artist Anselm Kiefer: "Every human being would go mad possessing full knowledge of the despicable ways of the world. As it is, every child is born into an empty space. That empty space is both empty and full: just as empty factory halls are full of traces and sounds of work once performed there. Every empty theatre is a space brimming with images and condensed words. Full emptiness is like loud silence."
My comment on Anselm Kiefer's excellent exhibition is that we ought all to be captains of our own ships of destiny, or at least that is my general idea; or it was, or it used to be, except that today the ships, that is to say the ships of state on which we all travel, are foundering on the dangerous reefs of avaricious and "despicable ways" and it has all too often been so. The echoes go before us.
Anselm Kiefer is currently showing at Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, nr. Vienna, Austria.
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On May 13th 2005 there was a great sandstorm in the Red Sea
Hope you enjoy the show..I love the work of Anselm Kiefer...saw it in Frankfurt some years ago...it's really stunning.thanks ffffor the post.
ReplyDelete"Every human being would go mad possessing full knowledge of the despicable ways of the world".
ReplyDeleteIt often crosses my mind that just about everything that could be thought, felt, experienced or perpetrated is probably going on somewhere at any given moment somewhere. Of course that includes good stuff as well as bad stuff, but it does not bear dwelling upon.
Gerry, thanks! A great exhibition. Stunning, indeed.
ReplyDeleteDominic, yes even as we email. I think it's a bit like watching all the plays of Shakespeare, all the drama, comedy and tragedy, all taking place on the one stage and all at the same time. God must have nightmares.