All language subtitles for BBC Imagine (2014).en

MATCH FLARES

Merci.

HE HUMS A TUNE

I've painted a long time
on this painting,

and added layers and layers
and layers,

and now I go back to the beginning.

HE WHISTLES A TUNE

You know, it's like in the cosmos -

it's always construction,
demolition, reconstruction.

All the stars who die,
and some others are born.

It's always like this.

Who is responsible for that?

Who started this in the beginning?
We don't know.

We don't know why we are here.
We don't know where we go.

It's quite desperate, no? Mm-hm.

Because we have an intellect
to try to find out, but we cannot.

When a star explodes,
all the material goes in the cosmos.

It's there. It's not...

God doesn't forget it, you know.

And then one day it will be
recomposed. It will be...

The gravity will recompose another
star, and so... So I keep it all.

I put it in one of the boxes there,
you know.

If you come, you can see here
different...

This is movable? Yes.

Here, different paintings, you see?

Different states.

HE HUMS A TUNE

It's much better now, I think.

Kiefer is emphatically
one of the most significant artists

currently working in the world.

Within the art world,
Kiefer's a giant, really.

There are some people whose
creativity verges on the demonic,

and he is one of those.

When I was a child, I did
tunnels in the garden of my parents,

and then I wrote something or made
a drawing on a piece of paper,

put it in the tunnel,
and then closed it.

I thought, you know,
"Why you do this?"

It must be a deep need to do
things like that.

ARTILLERY FIRE

I'm thinking of
when you were born, 1945,

and, obviously, that
moment in the history of Germany.

When I was a child,
the neighbour house was a ruin.

There was ruins around.

And this was your playground?

Yes, I had nothing else.

I played with these bricks in the
ruins of Donaueschingen, you know.

There was a mass of them,
I could play with them.

Kiefer's was a generation that had
been born at the very end

of the war, had grown up
in the ruins of the war,

had seen, to a certain extent,
the recovery of Germany, but, also,

dealing with the guilt,
the historical scar of Nazism.

A lot of it had been buried,
and I think Kiefer was

part of a generation that
started to question that.

It's extraordinary now

because Germany has been
about the best place in the world

to teach its children about the war
and the holocaust and the Nazis.

But even as late as the '60s,
it wasn't the case.

Something profound
and horrible has gone wrong,

Germany is shrouded in silence and
denial - a kind of willed amnesia.

The Nazis took over art -
they decided what was good and what

was bad. Kiefer wanted to sort of
purify, cleanse that role again.

From the very beginning,
you were very bold.

Reckless, almost, because, as you
say, Germany wasn't ready for it.

But...l wasn't ready too.

The starting point
was an innocent part.

A stupid part, if you want to say.

The Sieg Heil salute had been
banned in Germany since 1945.

Dressing up in his father's
Wehrmacht uniform

and performing it for a camera was
Kiefer's protest against forgetting.

When he took it to his tutors,
most of them were horrified,

and the only one who understood
what this precocious 24-year-old

artist was trying to do

was one of the tutors,
called Kuchenmeister,

who had actually been
in a concentration camp, I believe.

And he supported Kiefer in moving
forward in this way.

MUSIC: Die Lorelei
by Heinrich Heine

# lch weiss nicht
Was soll es bedeuten

# Dass ich so traurig bin

# Ein Marchen aus uralten Zeiten

# Das kommt mir nicht
aus dem Sinn... #

As a young artist,

Anselm Kiefer prodded incessantly
at the open wound of German history.

His paintings from that time

are covered with references

to mythical German heroes -

Siegfried, Hermann, Parsifal -

blood-soaked legends
of the deep past.

These are the same heroes
around whom the Nazis built a cult.

This made critics uneasy,

and led to outrage
when he represented Germany

at the Venice Biennale,
with some accusing him of fascism.

Was he trying to redeem these German
heroes and wash away their sins?

If people say, "Oh, who has
made that? ls this a neo—Nazi?"

then, um...

then I say nothing, because I go back
to an earlier time,

in which time,
I don't know what I was.

You understand?

It's not clear what I was in '30,
or in '39.

It's not clear
what happens with me in this time,

and most of the intellectuals,
they don't ask this question -

what they would have done,
or what they feel, really.

Kiefer's first flush of success
came in the 1980s, and he used

the money to buy and renovate an old
brick factory in Buchen, Germany.

Here he expanded

into sculpture and installation.

He began to create

a world for himself.

I've come to Buchen to see
this first studio for myself,

and to watch Kiefer
install some new work.

I think we have to go over...
over there. Yes, we go up here.

Careful to your head. Yes.

This was one aeroplane
but I didn't continue it.

It looks awkward.

'It's a bewildering and slightly
disorienting experience,

'and Kiefer himself
is difficult to keep up with -

'and not just physically.'

Sometimes I put diamonds in.
Then it's Valentinus.

You know, the...

Dress designer?

NO! No, no, no, no.
Who are you talking about?

Valentino from the antiquity.

Oh... No, from the...
He wasn't a second...second...

second century after Christ.

I'm looking down here,
and I'm seeing these boxes.

Obviously, you've collected these
things. Yes. Where do you find them?

In this building was a lot
of material of ancient craft things.

Yes. Yes. There was once a school
burning. I found a lot of things.

I always see things that could
fit once in my work.

But you don't necessarily know
where they're going to fit?

No, mostly not. Let's go down here.

When I did the straw paintings
in the '80s, then I had sometimes

an axe, and I took the straw away
when it was too much,

or when I wanted just the remnants
of straw on the painting,

and then...l didn't throw it away,
and I brought it here.

That's probably been
here for how many years?

When did you do the straw paintings?
Oh, that's here for...since '84.

So it's been here for about...

30 years, now. 30 years, yeah. Well,
it's... And it doesn't transform.

It's survived very, very well!

THEY LAUGH

Do you throw anything away?
No, never. Never anything.

I think it all can be...

..reused or transformed.

It was here in Buchen that Kiefer's
work began to develop

in new directions.

As he plunged deeper into the guilt
and horror of German history,

it was as though somehow
conventional paint

was no longer enough.

He began to mix it with ash, earth

and straw - the debris of the world.

These two paintings are Kiefer's

response to Death Fugue,

a poem about the Holocaust

by the Jewish poet Paul Celan.

IN GERMAN:

If the horror of the world

can be expressed by artists,

then that is
an achievement, isn't it?

The word "achievement"
is very difficult.

It's... As horrible as a subject is,
art becomes beauty.

That's... That's a malediction, even.
A curse?

It's a curse. That art that becomes
beauty, you know. But...

um...it doesn't mean that you have
found the sense of the world.

You have constructed a sense.

You could be seduced to think
that art could redeem the world.

It cannot.

You see there? Yeah.
They are the oven...

The brick ovens. The brick ovens.

This is really, for me,
very shocking, this,

and I never changed anything.
I just put a bulb in,

because this is already...
I cannot do it better, you know. Mm.

It's like it is, you know.

Well, of course, without saying it,
this is... Sure.

..very troubling
when you look at it.

It's... For this reason,
I never did something in here.

It's already enough. Yeah.

Dein goldenes Haar Margarete

Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith...

Julien, ca va?

The reason Kiefer has returned
to Buchen with his assistants

is to install these new works.

Here are those Occupations
photographs again,

now reused and transformed,
just like the straw.

They'd been blown up,
on giant sheets of lead.

In the '60s, I couldn't do them,

because I'd not the money
to do big exposures,

so there was a lot
of potentiality left.

ALAN LAUGHS

Lead is such a charged material.

I mean, it's poisonous,
it's base material, it's alchemical

and Kiefer loves all of that.

I think he likes the fact
that it's contaminated.

I think, you know, the contamination
of history by various regimes

is something he's explored.

I think the fact that a lot
of the books are made of lead,

you know - the literal
interpretation -

the weight of history,
that still reverberates.

'History is a material.'

It's like clay, you know.

You can form it as you want it.

You can abuse it, you know,
this form, what they all do.

Since the 1990s,
Kiefer's artistic vision has,

like the cosmos, expanded.

He began to attach objects
to his canvasses - plants,

lead books, the weapons of war.

Each object has a deeper meaning,

an allusion to one of Kiefer's

wildly diverse interests.

There are references

to ancient civilisations...

..to occult 17th-century
philosophers...

..or to NASA's attempts

to organise the stars.

If they could be said

to share a common theme,

it is man's quest

to make sense of the world.

The great thing for me about Anselm
is that he's really only interested

in the big questions in life -
"How did I get to be here?

"What am I here to do?"

And that's what he's trying
to work out and work through

in his painting and in his
sculptures and all of his work.

Are you a believer?

I believe not in a personal god,

who will help me or condemn me,
or...

HE LAUGHS
..put me into hell.

I... But it's evident that
there is something above us,

far above us, who...

what we cannot understand.

More and more, you ask yourself
why we are here,

and for what reason.
Nobody knows it.

So for this reason, you are always...

You are always...
Looking? Searching?

Looking...searching for something.

He has this kind of
Stanley—Kubrick—like view

which takes in simultaneously
the birth of the planet

and the death of the planet,
and the birth of civilisation

and the death of civilisation,

and the small stuff in between
can piss off.

In 1992, Kiefer moved his studio

to Barjac in the South of France.

Without the help
of architects or engineers,

Kiefer and his assistants
have turned this 200—acre site

into one of the most dazzling,

jaw-dropping works of art
in the world.

There are tunnels,

towers

and pavilions to house
his installations.

It is Kiefer's imagination,
writ large on the landscape.

CLATTERING

They are courageous, huh?

HE CHUCKLES

Now you can look through, Elektra!
Look!

Virgil, you have
so long feet from here.

There is a feeling at Barjac of
a giant intellectual as well as

physical playground.

It does feel like someone has been

allowed to let themselves loose

and do what they want to do,

and explore and play.

He's one of those artists

who absolutely uses

the selling of art to fund

these extraordinary projects.

There's no commercial
benefit in Barjac.

It's done because there is this
extraordinary compulsion.

HORN BLARES

MELODIC BEEPING

STEADY BEEPING

HORN BLARES

So how would you describe Barjac?

ls it a working studio,
or an exhibition space, or what?

It almost feels like a laboratory.

I would say "laboratory"
is a good word, yes.

Exhibition space, laboratory, and...

..it's a work of art
who has different issues,

or different material.

You know, it's landscape,

it's minimal art,
it's conception art, it's land art,

it's all these together.

It is an overwhelming place
to walk around,

and normally
it's off-limits to the public,

but one month from now,

Kiefer is inviting a select group

of curators and collectors here

for the very first time.

HORN BLARES

And there's work to be done.

KIEFER GROANS

KIEFER GROANS

Tony! L'ouest!

L'ouest. La? Oui. OK.

Tony!

'So I started with three containers.'

I put them,
and I put around other containers,

and then, in the space between,
I put concrete.

And here you can see the container is
still visible,

it was the inner container,
the container was outside,

I took it away and I had a wall.

So I started here,

I wanted just to have three places
underneath the earth...

..like bunkers.

And then I thought, it's so nice,
and I continued with the next

and the next and the next,
and it was a building,

all of a sudden.

So it was just growing,
growing like a painting, you know.

I like things in movement.
I don't like them static.

I like that they move
and that they surprise me.

If this would collapse, it would be
a wonderful surprise, you know.

I wanted that it slides
a little bit, you know.

Because you can imagine if
it would slide,

it would have been wonderful, no?

But it didn't. Didn't. Didn't want.

I get a cigar now.

I was a long time,
I had a problem,

I didn't know if I would be a writer
or a painter.

Now I cannot change
any more, it's done now.

His bookshelves are full
of physics and cosmology,

he's really, genuinely,
conceptionally so omnivorous,

he's still Anselm the kind of
teenager in a way,

who is very annoyed at life at not
giving him another 100 years

in which he can read absolutely
everything.

And that hasn't changed at all.

This is a printing machine,

they are filled up for centuries with
meanings, you know, it's enormous,

and, erm, yeah...

..and I transformed them
now in a new meaning.

In the Hebrew tradition,
the letters are sacrosanct,

however you combine them,
even in a completely irrational way,

it makes a sense, you know, because
the letters themselves are holy.

'These pillars are made with
a drill.'

So there was nothing, we drill -
bzzz.

And then in this hole,
we put the concrete.

These are the pillars then.

Here I left a hole, because
I like to come the earth in a room,

you know, it's wonderful, no?

Tony, this has to be done quickly
because I wanted it to stay like this.

OK, should we go up there?

We go up. How we can go up?

The best will be by here.

We can do something like this,
Anselm.

No touch... Below, Tony, it stays
like this.

Maybe we'll get a little bit more
stones when we are going to

work on it, but that's it, eh?

Oh-h, Tony...

You like scale, don't you?

Scale? I know you're in denial about
it, but is it important to you?

You know, I don't
look at it like you look.

It's my... It's my gesture.

It's my body who is implicated.

You know the quotation of Nietzsche -
"the philosopher has to dance".

You have to dance.

So it's...the physical part is
very obvious,

and the scale is a product
of the dance, if you want, you know.

What I see in your work, it makes
me look at the world differently.

Your use of material,
whether it's lead or it's straw,

material which ages, and changes,
and transforms.

I think the transformation
is in them.

Because since a few years,
some years,

I do electrolysis, I put
the painting in electrolysis bath.

You know, I want to put
some time on this painting.

I want to accelerate the time?

And this is what the alchemists do.

What happens in nature,
they accelerate.

My paintings goes very often to
change, they get green or red,

with time.

I think you can see
beauty in anything.

I remember I was walking
once on the beach in India.

And the people came in the morning
to the sea to shit, you know.

A lot.
Thousands. It was covered with shit.

And it was fantastic, you know,
you could see all colours.

It was a palette of colours.
No, there are no ugly things.

When you look at films, Germany
after May '45, you know...

It looks so fantastic,
these damaged towns, you know.

I mean, each artist or each writer,

he...his capital is his childhood,

you know, all what you learn
there, what you saw there.

Because you saw there without any
connotations, you saw it like...

innocently. innocently,
and that's important. Yeah.

All the source of inspiration, the
source of doing something is there.

You know, when you are a child,
you have little equipment

and now I have real ones.

But it's the same, you know.
It's not so much difference.

Achtung!

HE SHOUTS

This was less good.

HE SHOUTS

Yeah! Bravo, Tony!

You are a genius.
You are quite a genius.

No, no, no!

Andreas!

I would like to put this now there.

Jag

'I have to guard against order
sometimes,'

because there is always a middle way
or a compromise

between chaos and order.

If it's too chaotic,
nothing comes out, you know,

if it's too order, it's sterilised.

You have to always find
the way between these two things.

Let's go.

Stop! Stop!

Now that's better.

Ja. ja, ja. Gut.

Sunflowers are everywhere
in Kiefer's universe.

He seems to prefer them dead
and dried up,

when their heads are packed
with seeds -

a potent symbol of death
and rebirth.

Six years ago, Kiefer
moved his studio for a third time.

He now works here,

on an industrial estate half an hour
east of Paris,

in a warehouse that used to belong
to a department store.

Unlike Barjac,
everything here is on one level.

Paintings and sculptures can be
moved quickly on wheels.

In fact, everyone who works here
uses bicycles to get around.

You know, this,
what you see here is like my brain.

It's... All the synapses and things.

And I go around and sometimes
I find, late, a new connection

between some objects,
between a painting and an object,

or between two paintings, and so on.

Obviously you've collected
these things?

Oh, there are a lot of things,
skins of snakes,

there are rails out of clay,
or locomotives,

flowers, all kinds of plants,

debris, all kinds of things.

So you have your memories,
and your materials,

but also you might want to come back
to these works at any time.

So they're all here for you to...

They're waiting.

I think to wait is something
important.

It's philosophical to wait, no?

You know, today people don't wait
any more.

You are always contact with your
friend, your wife,

you have always
your Handy with you...

Oh, now I'm there...
It's no more waiting for someone.

Some of these works have been
waiting for a very, very long time.

I think there are works from '71.

In the containers outside,
I have works from the earlier '70s,

but I know where they are
in which container,

and then I go with my bicycle
through all the rooms,

all the spaces,
and then I have an idea.

Stop!

Do you enjoy the process of making?

Erm...it's difficult.
And sometimes it's a failure.

Because in any stage of a painting,
you have 100 possibilities,

and you have to choose one.

It's a war in your head, you know.

'And when I look two, three days
later, I think it's shit.'

It happens, you know.

Because you are in a certain
situation, and you think,

"Ah, now I've got something."
And then you have to wait.

To calm down, you know,
and then you see.

And sometimes, the contrary
happens too.

You think, "Oh, I work so much,
and it's damaged. It's not good."

And then, later, you see,
oh, you found a new thing.

How do you know when a work is ready
to leave the studio?

It's a very difficult moment.

Because it's artificial
interruption.

It's a crucial moment when I have to
give a painting to a show

and they sell it, and then I cannot
touch it any more because then

the curators or restorators take
over and it's taboo for me.

We should divide one in two
and then...

It's too much, Bill.
We cannot use these walls.

This gets out for the moment, OK?

We will take it out.

You know how he used to show me
the paintings?

There were the paintings,
there was a frame with wheels,

and the paintings were outside.

So, one day it was raining
and he wanted to show me

paintings on wheels.

I said, "Anselm, maybe we should
wait until it doesn't rain?"

He said, "Rain won't hurt it,
it might even help it."

And so he would bring the paintings
out, and leave them out

in the rain while we were looking
at them, and then put them all back.

So that's what's
so great about working with him.

Ja.

Oh, it looks already better, Bill.

'I did some flower paintings,
I like so much flowers, you know.

'And then I thought,
“That's difficult, to do flowers."

'It's too...comforting.

'People would like it too much.

'I thought I have to give
the flowers'

and the wonderful fields of flowers

another meaning. And I called it
Morgenthau Plan.

Henry Morgenthau Jr
was an American politician,

who in 1944, with victory imminent,

devised a plan for Germany
after the war.

He wanted to destroy its factories

and turn the entire
country into farmland.

The Nazis discovered this
and Goebbels seized the opportunity

to inspire the German people
to fight on.

So the Morgenthau Plan didn't happen,

but I like this idea
of these non-executed plans.

I think an artist has a good
opportunity to do something

with this,
because it didn't happen, you know.

I had in my head the idea
Germany would bloom everywhere,

there would be a lot of flowers,
wheat everywhere

and it would be a wonderful
green country.

Now we go here.

Because in the middle, it could be
more, how do you say, disparate?

Open fire!

You know, you do exhibitions,
you sell paintings,

and once you have to say,
"That's now finished."

But you're very reluctant to say
anything is finished.

Yes, I think it's never finished.

Even when it left my studio,
it continues.

Because, erm, the feeling
of the spectators play a big role.

Because they create then

thousands and millions of their
own picture of the picture.

You get a feeling now that
here's a man at the height

of his creative powers.

I mean, he always had energy but
I've just seen a level of intensity

in the last ten years escalate.

And I think it's going to be
a phenomenal late period.

Maturity, I think we call it.

"Die Erzeitalt."

You know what it is in English? No.

Strats... The strats of the time.

For example, you can see a portrait
here, look.

You see these flowers?

Yes!

THEY CHUCKLE

The Queen of France, you see?

She doesn't look too pleased,
Anselm!

ANSELM LAUGHS

I don't think there's ever been
anything like this quite

in the Royal Academy.

THEY CHUCKLE

Did you spend much time
establishing this in this room?

No. Four and a half hours. Wow.

It goes quick, I have five people,
and they throw it.

I made it from this side, you know.

But it's always
better from the other side.

You was aware of this?

It's controlled from this side,
from the other side not.

And that's mostly better.

And in this room... You want some in
your camera?

That's me. Me projected to another
time, to the geological time.

Our life is so short, you know.

So it's a sort
of self—portrait, is it?

It's a self-exploration,

to be connected
to the geological time,

then I have more time, you know.

Perhaps it has something to do with
turning 70 next year, but

Kiefer's fascination with time seems
to be getting deeper and wider.

Geological time is the oldest
time on Earth,

stretching back millions of years.

A timescale in which the human race,

and everything,
everything it has achieved,

is little more than a blip.

330 million years ago a big
meteorite hit the Earth,

and then all...l think 97% of all
livings was destroyed.

And if this meteorite wouldn't have
hit the Earth,

you wouldn't be there,
because evolution would have gone

in another direction.

FLUTE PLAYS

Now tell me, do you dream, Anselm?

You know, the most wonderful dreams
are always connected with water.

Water can be also very, erm...

Dangerous?

ja. It comes down
and dissolves all like this.

When I was growing up,
I had always nightmares

but now I don't have any
more nightmares.

I was always fascinated
by the expression -

“I hold all Indias in my hand."

It's from a poet, Quevedo,
from the 17th century.

We know the continents was once all
together, then they were separated

and I liked the idea to reorganise
the continents

by swimming.

Why are you an artist?

You know, I...
I have to connect things in the world

in a different way.

You see a lot of things.
They are disparate.

And, um, you want to have
a connection, to feel more secure,

or to feel better.

And this is what artists do,

they create a new connection
between things.

We don't know why we are here.
We don't know where we go.

We have an intellect to
try to find out.

But we cannot.

It's quite desperate, no?