Review by Choice Review
Kiefer's artworks span 30 years and the media of photography, painting, books, and installations. An important figure in the art world of the late 20th century, his recurrent themes are German history and the holocaust, memory, and the contrast of destruction (by war or industry) and growth. His palette is distinctive in the way it pivots about the monochromatic neutrality of gray and plays with delicate tensions of warm and cool tones. He is also known for making use of raw materials such as ashes, twigs, and grasses, which he mixes with paint and gesso to produce a thick encaustic surface. The power of Kiefer's work is difficult to produce on the printed page because the rich textures, magnified by the scale and high relief of the actual work, are lost in reproduction. Although Arasse (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) is erudite and convincing in his discussion of Kiefer's work through a dozen chapters, perhaps the best thing about this book is that it manages to communicate the subtlety and power of Kiefer's art. The book is very well designed, expertly printed, and is an excellent resource--maybe the best--for studying Kiefer, short of seeing his actual works. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty. S. Skaggs University of Louisville
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Controversy has accompanied German artist Kiefer ever since his debut at the 1980 Venice Biennale, and now his challenging, wildly expressive, and theatrical paintings, sculptures, and installations receive all the space, high-quality reproductions, and fluent interpretation they demand in this superb, groundbreaking volume. Arasse begins by discussing the complexity of Kiefer's themes and iconography, noting that, taken as a whole, his work evinces a "labyrinthine quality," and addresses "the question of whether, and to what extent, it was possible to be a `German artist' after the Holocaust and the appropriation of that country's national artistic and cultural traditions by the Third Reich." It isn't easy to grasp all that Kiefer is up to in his disturbingly ambiguous inquiry into Nazi imagery, blending of myth and history, depictions of scorched and blasted landscapes and buildings, and use of books as objects, so readers will greatly appreciate Arasse's lucidity, energetic intellectual engagement, and forthrightness in discussing the ethical problems and philosophical conundrums posed by Kiefer's undeniably powerful creations. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
