Sep. 25, 2023

中译

To paint in order to know, to know in order to paint.

It’s been ten years since I began painting. In the first half, I painted the people I encountered. In the second, I turned outward—to know the world. Now, I am beginning to integrate the two: people, within the world I’ve come to know.

On Anselm Kiefer

“Who’s the greatest artist today?”

“Elon Musk! But if we’re only talking fine art—then Anselm Kiefer.”

Plato’s “Artificer” → Wagner’s “Gesamtkunstwerk” → Kiefer

When Richard Wagner envisioned “the consummated art form of the future,” he called it Gesamtkunstwerk—a total artwork. It would be a synthesis of all arts into one unified aesthetic and intellectual experience.

But the roots run deeper: back to Plato, who spoke of the Artificer—the Divine Craftsman, the Demiurge. For Plato, nothing comes from nothing. The Artificer doesn’t create ex nihilo; he confronts and orders what already exists in chaotic form. He is a planner, an architect. (Kiefer has described his own creative process in much the same way.)

Fast forward from Wagner’s 19th century to his imagined “future”—our present—and Anselm Kiefer emerges as a true heir to German Idealism and Romanticism：

What we discover in the Self is simply a microcosm of the whole, which is then projected as the nature of reality. The creative spirit pulsates through everything. (See Athanor)

What sets Kiefer apart?

“Percepts without concepts are blind; concepts without percepts are empty.”

— Kant

Sensibility and intellect, he achieves both.