ThoughtGallery.org > Public Art Fund Talks @ The New School: Anselm Kiefer

Public Art Fund Talks @ The New School: Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is one of the most significant voices of his generation and has achieved critical acclaim for his monumental body of work, which directly addresses questions of collective memory and national identity in Germany after World War II. His works incorporate a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions, with diverse references to religion, mysticism, and mythology. Accordingly, the form of the book itself has become a central motif in his 50-year oeuvre evoking an accumulation of knowledge, storytelling, and culture.

Kiefer’s conversation at The New School with Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume and noted British art historian Richard Calvocoressi accompanies Public Art Fund’s upcoming exhibition, Uraeus, the artist’s first site-specific outdoor public sculpture in the United States. Located at the top of Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens, facing Fifth Avenue, this large-scale sculpture, full of symbolic resonance, will rise more than 20 feet above the ground, creating a majestic image: a book with wings outstretched as if in flight. Clustered around the base are further outsize lead books, while a large snake coils up the column towards the winged-book. As repositories for human knowledge and expression, books are powerful symbols in the artist’s work and when paired with wings uplifted and outstretched, give the impression of these ideals taking flight as if in triumph. Paradoxically, the book is made of lead, the heaviest of all base metals and one of Kiefer’s preferred materials for its soft, fluid properties, while the mammoth 30-foot wing-span is also fashioned from the thick, alchemical material. Uraeus extends his vocabulary of striking mythic forms, presented at an arresting new scale. It explores longtime motifs in his work that, in this context and contemporary moment, resonate in powerful new ways.

Anselm Kiefer: Uraeus is presented by Gagosian and organized by Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer. It will be on view from May 2 – July 22, 2018 at the Fifth Avenue entrance to Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens between 49th and 50th Streets in Midtown Manhattan.











When: Mon., Apr. 30, 2018 at 6:30 pm
Where: The New School
66 W. 12th St.
212-229-5108
Price: $10
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Anselm Kiefer is one of the most significant voices of his generation and has achieved critical acclaim for his monumental body of work, which directly addresses questions of collective memory and national identity in Germany after World War II. His works incorporate a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions, with diverse references to religion, mysticism, and mythology. Accordingly, the form of the book itself has become a central motif in his 50-year oeuvre evoking an accumulation of knowledge, storytelling, and culture.

Kiefer’s conversation at The New School with Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume and noted British art historian Richard Calvocoressi accompanies Public Art Fund’s upcoming exhibition, Uraeus, the artist’s first site-specific outdoor public sculpture in the United States. Located at the top of Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens, facing Fifth Avenue, this large-scale sculpture, full of symbolic resonance, will rise more than 20 feet above the ground, creating a majestic image: a book with wings outstretched as if in flight. Clustered around the base are further outsize lead books, while a large snake coils up the column towards the winged-book. As repositories for human knowledge and expression, books are powerful symbols in the artist’s work and when paired with wings uplifted and outstretched, give the impression of these ideals taking flight as if in triumph. Paradoxically, the book is made of lead, the heaviest of all base metals and one of Kiefer’s preferred materials for its soft, fluid properties, while the mammoth 30-foot wing-span is also fashioned from the thick, alchemical material. Uraeus extends his vocabulary of striking mythic forms, presented at an arresting new scale. It explores longtime motifs in his work that, in this context and contemporary moment, resonate in powerful new ways.

Anselm Kiefer: Uraeus is presented by Gagosian and organized by Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer. It will be on view from May 2 – July 22, 2018 at the Fifth Avenue entrance to Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens between 49th and 50th Streets in Midtown Manhattan.

Buy tickets/get more info now