Painting as Drama. Staging Dialogue in Anselm Kiefer Cover Image

Malerei als Drama. Anselms Kiefers Bühne für den Dialog
Painting as Drama. Staging Dialogue in Anselm Kiefer

Author(s): Anna Kostner
Subject(s): German Literature
Published by: Editura Universităţii de Vest din Timişoara
Keywords: The Sand from the Urns; poetry; painting; dialogue; history;

Summary/Abstract: It has frequently been pointed out that Paul Celan’s poems have a dialogic im-pulse. In this respect, Anselm Kiefer’s paintings can be considered the pictorial extension of Celan’s poetic structures. I will argue that with the inscriptions on his paintings, Kiefer exhibits dialogic moments, relating different perspectives to one another, thereby attempting to understand painting as drama; that is, to create a place for visual experience where no epic narrative is told, but an ongoing and dramatic conflict is acted out. This will be illustrated by a closer look of two of Kiefer’s paintings: The Sand from the Urns (for Ingeborg Bachmann, for , 1997) and The Sand from the Urns (for Paul Celan, 2009).

  • Issue Year: 1/2023
  • Issue No: 61
  • Page Range: 175-191
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: German