Art Analysis: Anslem Kiefer's Interior
Anslem Kiefer’s ‘Interior’ is an 1981 oil, acrylic, paper, straw, wood chippings and shellac on canvas work, showing a cavernous hall, based on the Mosaic Room in the New Reich Chancellery.
The painting captures the Nazi architecture, focusing on the rigid grid sky light and the repetition of vertical lines along the walls, the neo-classical style reflecting the Nazi ideals of authority, discipline, order and permanence.
While this is clear in the painting, and the architecture alone gives a very overpowering atmosphere to the piece the use of black on the walls creates a very grim and ominous feeling and in direct contradiction to the Nazi idea of permanence, the scratchy texture and weathered, aged nature of the painting undermines that and begins to question the ideas of permanence. …show more content…
To add to this again, the painting is around 9 square feet, all together meaning that when confronted with the piece, the viewer feels inconsequential and isolated.
One of the early themes of Kiefer’s work was forcing Germany to remember and confront its past, and this is felt here with the fact that the painting has a distinct lack of people intensifying the isolation, linking back to the context of Nazi Germany by almost forcing the viewer to confront the horrors of the past alone.
This could also relate to Kiefer’s theme of the past, and time in several ways, by pointing out the insignificance of the individual in history, or the insignificance of individual places, and events.
Kiefer has been quoted as saying, ‘I like vanished things,’ and contextually, the New Reich Chancellery was destroyed at the end of WWII in 1945, also the year of Kiefer’s
The painting captures the Nazi architecture, focusing on the rigid grid sky light and the repetition of vertical lines along the walls, the neo-classical style reflecting the Nazi ideals of authority, discipline, order and permanence.
While this is clear in the painting, and the architecture alone gives a very overpowering atmosphere to the piece the use of black on the walls creates a very grim and ominous feeling and in direct contradiction to the Nazi idea of permanence, the scratchy texture and weathered, aged nature of the painting undermines that and begins to question the ideas of permanence. …show more content…
To add to this again, the painting is around 9 square feet, all together meaning that when confronted with the piece, the viewer feels inconsequential and isolated.
One of the early themes of Kiefer’s work was forcing Germany to remember and confront its past, and this is felt here with the fact that the painting has a distinct lack of people intensifying the isolation, linking back to the context of Nazi Germany by almost forcing the viewer to confront the horrors of the past alone.
This could also relate to Kiefer’s theme of the past, and time in several ways, by pointing out the insignificance of the individual in history, or the insignificance of individual places, and events.
Kiefer has been quoted as saying, ‘I like vanished things,’ and contextually, the New Reich Chancellery was destroyed at the end of WWII in 1945, also the year of Kiefer’s