aldrich~LIVE: notes as a docent trainer @ The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Tuesday, June 13, 2006



Universal Truths within Anselm Kiefer: Velimir Chlebnikov

Velimir Chlebnikov is an exhibition by Anselm Kiefer (b.1945-today) that is a major new installation of recent paintings based on a Russian eccentric poet and thinker, Velimir Chlebnikov. Long having fascinated Kiefer, Chlebnikov is best known for creating analytical systems based on arcane mathematical calculations, which aim to indicate historical paradox and human absurdity.

Velimir Chlebnikov (1885 – 1922), was a fringe Russian Futurist Poet. (Futurism was an international art movement founded in Italy in 1909. for more see: (http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/). At university, Chlebnikov studied both mathematics and linguistics. It was here that he began developing ideas for the renovation of poetic language. Chlebnikov partially founded Russian Futurism along with Vladimir Mayakovsky. When researching Chlebnikov, one will find that his work is less well-known than his fellow Futurist Mayakovsky, however, it is arguable that he exerted greater influence on twentieth-century poetry.

The Russian Futurists set out to shock the middle classes. They did so by staging extravaganzas. “Their poetics advocated a coarse vernacular, a whiplash line, verbal antics such as the pun and double-entendre, and a garnish of typographical invention”… Chlebnikov retained a degree of mysticism in his work – a mysticism of objects and words rather than of ideas and symbols” (Power 2). Proclaimed as a genius and the “King of Time”, he would travel through Persia as a lecturer/ journalist for the Russian government impressing his ideas on the cycles of time to soldiers of the Red Army. His goal was to create a universal language and to discover the algorithms that govern natural and historical events.



The writings of Chlebnikov navigate both history and time. Through systematic study of naval histories, Chlebnikov concludes that “sea battles repeat themselves every 370 years, or the multiples.” Apparently, his calculations take into account the charting of stars in relationship to recorded dates of sea skirmishes. As if this were not enough, his writings are constructed in a Russian Futurist style. This style implemented a Russian language “free from dilution.” In taking his native language, Chlebnikov “transformed it into something totally plastic and sonic by adopting a system of sounds derived from a pure Slavic vocabulary untinged by European or Latin influences as well as sounds taken from the animal world”(Power 2). That said, one finds that texts of his writing have been labeled with disclaimers stating that ‘the contents are incomprehensible’.

Chlebnikov’s biography is surely one of the most seductive in the history of Russian letters. Anselm’s Kiefer’s fascination with Chlebnikov and his work is likely due to the ability to rethink history on both an epistemological and philosophical level. Both are timely historians involved in the activity of rethinking how we know the past through history. Through the genesis of these paintings, Anselm Kiefer has given extended consideration to the life’s work of Velimir Chlebnikov. He has represented in a visual form, the memory and history of turbid waters, endless conflicts and sinking ships.

Similar to Chlebnikov, Kiefer’s work “radically and obsessively questioned his own tradition - not to push towards a utopia, but to find his own identity. It has cultivated its own mystique: opaque layers of German Romanticism, Mediterranean mythologies and esoteric doctrines, and, even more significantly, of a highly personal communication with the meaning of things”(Power 2). The exhibition however, is an amalgamation of more elements than just the writings of Velimir Chlebnikov.

For instance, Kiefer’s perceptibly physical style of painting accompanied by the vast scale of the work provides viewers an entrance into an immersive space. The exhibition itself is encased within a replica of a building in Barjac, France that the artist owns and used as a studio for the works’ conception. This building has been reassembled twice. The first time was on Hoxton Square in London for an opening with White Cube Gallery (2005). Now, it is re-installed for the second time in the Cornish Sculpture Garden at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut (2006).



The pavilion in which the thirty paintings reside, is a vast structure. Approximately 25’ x 50’ x 30’ (w’ x d’ x h’), with a massive doorway, the building emanates the aura of a cathedral, temple, or mausoleum. Standing inside, the paintings engulf and overwhelm the viewer within a sea of stimulating surfaces.

In the paintings Kiefer has inserted elements that reference layered meanings. For example, in several paintings there exist massive model ships, sunflowers*, or artist gloves hanging or attached directly to the canvas. Made of lead and/or plaster these carry metaphorical and physical weight. The ships are bodies within the sea tossed about endless waves. The sunflowers carry mythological meaning. Lastly, the artist glove refers to the hand of the artist. In an artwork, the hand of the artist is analogous to the hand of God.

An undercurrent to the work that can be appreciated with close attention, is the reference to love and desire. On many paintings there are references scrawled onto the canvas in the upper left corner. The text is “Odi Navali” (Italian for Naval Ode*), “Hero and Leander”* (Greek Mythological Lovers), or “Aphrodite”* (Greek Goddess of love, beauty and sexual desire). All of these were also the names of ships during World War II. Therefore, these vessels can be interpreted on a literal, a metaphorical, and a conceptual basis.

It is said that if you take an idea and enlarge it, it will become absurd once it is blown out of proportion. On the other hand, if you take a large idea and distill it to simplified proportion, it becomes concentrated and more potent. In a way, this is exactly what Kiefer has done with the concept of love and war. Using the writings of Chlebnikov as a springboard, Kiefer has infused mythological understandings with German Romanticism to acknowledge this inherently paradoxical opposition within human nature.


“The opposite of war is not peace, it is creation”
- Jonathan Larson Rent

“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence”
-Henry Louis Mencken

“All is fair in love and war”
- Francis Edward Smedley

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