A major retrospective of the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer (1945) took place at the Royal Academy in London in the autumn of 2014. The show presented the artist’s nearly complete oeuvre, spanning his entire forty year career. Kiefer created also new work responding to the spaces of the Royal Academy. Was this new work as good, monumental, complex, historical and captivating as the oeuvre we know?

Kiefer is often seen as one of the major contemporary artists of our time. His body of work is diverse and includes sculpture, drawing, painting and quite monumental installations using and incorporating materials such as ash, lead, straw, clay and shellac. He is not afraid to address controversial issues or taboos. The German history and particularly the horror of the Holocaust and the Nazi period are reflected in his work. Characteristic also is the presence of signatures and/or names of people of historical significance, legendary figures or places particularly pregnant with history.

Think of Goethe’s poetry, Wagner’s Ring cycle or the mythical mountain resting place of Emperor Frederick I. He draws on mythology, history, philosophy, topography, folk customs, architecture, literature and science. He is foremost uncompromising in his choice for subject matter.

Was his retrospective a Kiefer history novel? Did he prove and enforce his position as major and significant contemporary artist? Or was it a commercial, plain and picked together collection like most of the retrospectives are?

Anselm Kiefer

Royal Academy, London

27 September – 14 December 2014