Intelligence Is the Art of Remaining Faithful under Shifting Circumstances,
Alexander Kluge and Anselm Kiefer (£18.99, Seagull Books)
This is a beautifully produced and illustrated collaborative book, a dialogue between a filmmaker/writer and a visual artist, a commentary and a digression about and around Anselm Kiefer’s astonishing art.
Alexander Kluge is a new name to me but he and Kiefer seem to have a long-term and ongoing relationship where ideas are exchanged, rebuffed and built upon. Kluge brings his wide-ranging knowledge of mythology, alchemy, history, politics and sociology to the debate, riffing upon the complex layers and meanings of Kiefer’s often huge canvasses, photographic works, lead books, sculptures and themed exhibitions/installations.
As far as I can tell, Kiefer’s art exists first and then Kluge writes about it. It appears that they discuss this writing, as there are several short conversations throughout the book and occasional retorts or comments from Kiefer printed in red. It is sometimes hard to follow Kluge’s train of thought as he traverses Romanticism, German history (including 20th Century events it might prefer to forget), Jewish Kabbala and storytelling (such as different versions of the Golem), Robert Fludd and other alchemists, contemporary physics, magic, ‘music and celestial harmony’ and ideas about knowledge and truth.
Partly because everything is presented as fact, be it alchemical transformation or how a Golem can only ‘live’ (or be activated or used) for forty days. Both are simply referenced in the same way as optical lenses and filmmaking, or how photos can be transferred using electrolysis. Kiefer uses the same strategies in his work and exhibitions, with the resource material he writes and speaks about showing little explicit link to the creative work. He prefers implied meanings and viewers’ own reactions and responses.
Both Kiefer and Kluge seem to embrace a kind of Romanticism, an idea of individuals remaining true to the self (the ‘faithful’ of the title) within a complex universe can only be understood, perhaps at best partially, through various systems and concepts, rational or not. Kluge’s personal universe of knowledge is fascinating but often not helpful in understanding or even simply looking at Kiefer’s art. Often I share no frames of reference or understanding of what is being alluded to, any more than I do the specifics of many of Kiefer’s individual art works.
When I do, such as in the chapter (or ‘Station’ as the chapters are called here) about Finnegans Wake, which was the inspiration for and title of an exhibition at White Cube, London, which I saw and have the catalogue for, Kluge’s writing starts well. Suggesting that James Joyce’s book is a ‘construction site of words’ is a great concept, but Kluge is quickly sidetracked by contemporary use (as opposed to Joyce’s use) of the word ‘quark’, and then suggests words resist colonization, that is they revolt and find their own new and different meanings, before sidestepping to another metaphor about the flow of meaning in relation to the river Liffey in Dublin. ‘The arts move within their own weather pattern,’ declares Kluge, moving from watercourses to weather, before skipping to notions of translation, language belonging to time, and proposing that a text such as Finnegan’s Wake can be understood without translation anyway when read aloud.
Although it’s exciting and thought-provoking reading, the wild jumps between disconnected ideas can be confused and confusing. This is not helped by the fact that the numerous QR codes in the book, which supposedly link to short (often very short) films by Kluge, take me only to a vast website where it seems impossible to find specific works, especially without an English translation. I feel I am missing an important part of this project, in the same way that I simply do not have the cerebral map to find my way through the book.
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Rupert Loydell.
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