Table Of ContentBorn just weeks before the end of the Second World War in
Donaueschingen, a town at source of the Danube, Anselm Kiefer grew up
playing in the rubble of postwar Germany. For Kiefer as a child, ruins
were the norm: sites of beauty, a source of fascinating games and material
to build with. Indeed, the aesthetic of devastation continues to dominate
his paintings which are often constructed of organic materials, debris, dirt,
ash and lead as well as paint.
Kiefer studied law and Romance languages before pursuing his studies of
art in Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf, where he met and was influenced by Joseph
Beuys. He first gained recognition and reproach in equal parts in 1969 with
Occupations, a series of photographs of himself dressed in his father’s army
uniform making the Hitler salute in front of historical monuments or vast
landscapes throughout Europe.
With his move to Barjac in southeastern France in 1993, where he estab-
lished his studio, La Ribaute, in an abandoned silkworm-breeding factory,
the scope of Kiefer’s interests as well as the dimensions of his art works
expanded dramatically. His themes and allusions grew to include Babylonian,
Norse and Roman mythology, astrology, alchemy and molecular biology,
Catholicism and the Kabbalah, and his paintings and sculptures are replete
with direct and indirect allusions to writers such as Paul Celan, Ingeborg
Bachmann, Walter Benjamin, Robert Fludd, Isaac Luria, Hölderlin and
Robert Musil, to name a few.
It is at La Ribuate that this volume of his notebooks—a journal he has been
keeping faithfully for over 30 years—was written.
Since 2007, Kiefer has made his primary studio in the former warehouse of
the department store La Samaritaine outside Paris.
In his recent works, he often returns to the concerns, imagery and themes
that have preoccupied him from the start. Often, several works, created years
or even decades apart, will share the same title for Kiefer’s artistic vision is a
cyclical one.
THE GERMAN LIST
ANSELM
KIEFER
- --
NOTEBOOKS
VOLUME 1: 1998–1999
TRANSLATED BY TESS LEWIS
LONDONNEWYORKCALCUTTA
This publication was supported by a grant
from the Goethe-Institut India
Seagull Books, 2015
First published as Anselm Kiefer, Notizbucher,Band 1,1998–1999
© Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2011
First published in English translation by Seagull Books, 2015
English translation © Tess Lewis, 2015
Notes to the English Edition © Seagull Books, 2015
All citations in the Notes to the English Edition
© Respective authors, publishers, websites, galleries, etc.
ISBN 978 0 8574 2 312 2
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Seagull Books, Calcutta, India
Printed and bound by Maple Press, York, Pennsylvania, USA
NOTEBOOKS
VOLUME 1: 1998–1999
The entries reproduced exclusively in lower case were written by Anselm Kiefer on
his computer. The other,hand-written entries were recorded in his travel diaries.
8/3/98
8.30 P.M. after a certain period of time. what is this ‘certain period
of time’? according to the files, it’s been a good two years since i
last wrote anything much, amazing my fingers can still find the right
keys, even if a bit hesitantly. what prompted me to turn on my laptop
were thoughts about continuing work on my mosaic, now called les
reines de france, 560 x 750 cm.1
1
15/3/98 sunday
8.40 P.M. seven years, what kind of time span is that? seven years,
by then you’re already in school, have been for at least a year. there’s
also the cursed seventh year and the replacement of cells every
seven years. and the flying dutchman comes ashore every seven
years, seven-armed candelabras, etc., etc., etc. and this laptop has
been in use for seven years now. in use, it’s more than that. every-
thing i’ve written in the past seven years is in it. strange, as if it were
a being seven years old, but not like a seven-year-old typewriter,
that’s nothing, because this has a memory, a memory that spans
seven years—yes, the memory’s there but it’s a memory only for cer-
tain things that were typed in. and this memory belongs to no one,
is at no one’s disposal. seven years, that’s not a short time. but oh,
so little has been written here. a mere fraction of all that happened
in those seven years . . .
on sunday, continued work on the picture with the tesserae (560 x
750 cm). started that a few years ago, too: gluing small stones as a
special act, as an actuality, something that makes time pass. some-
thing you don’t (shouldn’t) think possible: that something should
slip in, slip out, slip away. a short-circuit, for example, taking literally
the word ‘sand’ in ‘märkischer sand’.2 the individual parts, the
tesserae, the special technique by which the whole consists of indi-
vidual parts. vermeer, for example, the many grains on the canvas.
today the spaces between them would be filled in with colour,
jointed, so to speak. that makes it morbid: the colour inserted
between the tiles and smeared on them. in the places where the tiles
have been painted over, it looks like the tiles have fallen out, thus an
annulment of the mosaic—a mosaic that has lost its tiles.
A MOSAIC THAT HAS LOST ITS TILES
2
the question that has preoccupied the painter today is: how many
tiles can be lost before it’s no longer a mosaic? at the very top right,
too many tiles seem to be missing in one spot, there’s only some
kind of base layer. and something else, but that’s not what we want,
we want something specific, but what is ‘something specific’? what
is ‘something’?
SOMETHING SPECIFIC
something is a hollow mould. ‘doing something’ can mean anything,
something can contain everything. is there anything that doesn’t fit
into something? yes: nothing. something can be anything except
nothing. and so as it applies to the mosaic: some kind of base layer
on which anything can happen is not what we want. we want to
remove from the mosaic only the exact number of tiles that will let
it remain something specific. because when all the tiles are left on
the mosaic, then it’s a specific mosaic and not ‘something specific.
a specific mosaic is limited, it can be described and classified, for
example, you can count the tiles and so on. . . . but something spe-
cific is a particular thing and it can’t be classified so easily. a few
tiles have to remain in very specific spots so the rest can be added—
in one’s head. and only there can the rest, all the tiles that were lost
or removed, be added, and, in fact, added more quickly than with
the most powerful computer. it’s the same with relics, you’ve got only
one nail left of the cross, just a lock of hair from this or that saint.
the rest is secretly present. the rest is secretiveness.
SECRETIVENESS
a truly romantic mosaic is one that is missing as many tiles as
possible.
3
