Kiefer's Monumenta 2007

Time flies in Paris — so many people to see, so many places to go to, so much food to eat (& happily enough kilometers to walk to work it off…). Best part of Wednesday was getting to the Grand Palais and the Monumenta 2007 exhibition, Anselm Kiefer’s Sternenfall / Chute d’étoiles show — a massive installation involving 10 houses housing paintings & some sculpture, and a range of concrete & steel bunker ruins strewn / dispersed / built up inbetween and in the various houses. The show is dedicated to a great extent to Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann, though there are other literary figures also, such as Céline, who have fired Kiefer’s imagination. I must say that I am partial to the 47 “paintings” (a series of works that turn around, and include actual ferns — rhyming with Celan’s profound interest in and knowledge of those and other plants and flowers) that make up the Celan house as they are less “monumental” — even in their assemblage — as most of the other work. Also impressive was the (indeed, monumental) “library” installation made of lead (which Kiefer bought wholesale when the Cologne cathedral’s roof was renewed) and glass. I forsook the massive and way too heavy & expensive catalogue, but did buy a recent book on Kiefer and Celan (already shipped back to Albany so I’ll report on it in the fall). Here are two of my own poor snapshots taken in situ: