Wild Angels-Catalog-small-with-cover

W i l d A n g e l s AnselmKiefer’s 1989 Poppy and Memory is a highly impressive work engaged in the memory of the Holocaust, along with questions about nature, culture, construction, and destruction, and the desecrated sanctity of life. Kiefer, the most prominent artist of Germany’s post-war generation, created a large lead airplane with many details, such as windows with poppy seeds. This was his way of referring to the Holocaust, to Paul Celan’s references to it, and to history as a sequence of wars. Some claim that Kiefer is alluding to Klee’s Angelus Novus . Anselm Kiefer’s works are impressive. Interestingly, his interpretation of a winged figure is a mechanical human invention. The airplane, a flying machine, is presented as an immobile contrivance. It is a remnant of war that can potentially sprout and revive (like the poppy seeds). At first glance, the angels look delicate, frail, and transparent; a metaphor for spirituality. Their liquidity and airiness, which is devoid of dichotomous or defined boundaries, is associated with something spiritual and sublime. The winged figure seems innocent, but a second look reveals its strength and essential power. The viewer is able to see through this picture. When I started working on this series, I experimented with the notion of painting without materials, while I contemplated the idea of what would happen if I had to paint with air. This point of departure, and the subject of the paintings guided me in my work. I used color, but it was diluted – sometimes almost invisible. Gradually, a free play emerged between transparency and opacity that occasionally comprised layers upon layers, open and closed shapes, patterns that appeared and disappeared, orders that broke apart and came together. Drifting from one painting to another was easy, and I felt free to explore this subject somewhat differently in each picture. It was an enjoyable and liberating process, like moving in the wind. Anselm Kiefer, Poppy and Memory , 1989