Fire on the Earth: Anselm Kiefer and the Postmodern World

by John C. Gilmour

Born in 1945, the German painter Anselm Kiefer "represents the concerns and insecurities of postwar European intellectuals, confronted by a questionable past and a future so threatening that it tends to create despair." In this philosophical case study of Kiefer’s work, John C. Gilmour addresses a crisis that is common to twentieth-century art and aesthetic the loss of confidence in the ideals and world view inherited from the Enlightenment. Modernism’s historical moment has passed, he claims, and Kiefer’s art—which was the subject of a recent national exhibition—reveals the contours of an emerging postmodern vision. Considering the writings of Jameson, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Nietzsche, among others, Gilmour shows how Kiefer’s use of literary, mythological, and other cultural texts parallels the intertextual approach common among postmodern theorists. At the same time, the artist’s cosmological questioning adds a dimension lacking among many of postmodernism’s leading proponents. The author interprets Kiefer’s art as a site where distinctions between modern and postmodern senses of representation, history, cosmology, and nature become thematic. He addresses individual paintings—the book includes forty-four illustrations—and gives the historical, biographical, art-critical, and philosophical setting for each piece.

Genres: Art, Philosophy

214 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes a postmodern sensibility to explore many issues, with Anselm Kiefer's art as the nodal point for inquiry. Among the interesting twists of this book is an exploration of Vernant's concept of "tragic man." For this person, ". . .the flow of natural consequences is independent of any single agent's intentions since it is impossible to control the past or to change life's cosmic circumstances." As an example, in "King Oedipus," the main character is doomed by a past that he is unaware of, by the whims of the gods, and to a lesser extent by his own pride--the desire to find out the answer to the riddle of his father's death. In that sense, he was not the most significant agent of his own destruction, although he bore some responsibility. Vernant argues that Greek tragedy reflects the desire of the agent of action to try to control events while simultaneously acknowledging that there are great limits on that control due to primordial forces more powerful than humans.

At any rate, Gilmour's book is a fascinating tour de force, with nice photos to exemplify points that he makes.