We visited the Margulies collection and his Anselm Kiefer exhibition this year on a rainy December day in Miami. The mood was just right, and each piece was specifically housed in a space to experience the work singularly. This was perfect for the Kiefers, as his installations often demand monumental space – white, but gritty, his materiality was in a fantastic context to experience it.
Enjoy some of our favorites from his collection, and from the exhibition. It is a must-see!
Joan Miro, Oiseau, 1981 from The Margulies Collection.
Images courtesy of Suzanne Lovell, Inc.
Willem de Kooning, Seated Woman, 1969-81, bronze. The Margulies Collection.
Dan Flavin, Untitled, in Memory of Harold Joachim, 1977. Pink, blue, green and yellow florescent lights, fixtures. The Margulies Collection.
Anselm Kiefer, Sprache der Vogel, 1989. Lead, steel, wood, oil, plaster, resin and acrylic.
The ideology of alchemy is the hastening of time, as in the lead-silver-gold cycle which needed only time in order to transform lead into gold. In the past the alchemist sped up this process with magical means. That was called magic. As an artist I don’t do anything differently. I only accelerate the transformation that is already present in things. That is magic as I understand it. – Anselm Kiefer
The title of this three ton sculpture translates to the “Language of the Birds”, which according to the 20th century French alchemist Fulcanelli, teaches “the mystery of things and unveils the most hidden of truths”.
Anselm Kiefer, Gehimnis der Farne, 2007. Installation of 48 pictures and two concrete sculptures, clay argile, ferms, emulsion and concrete.
The first trees were ferns. They are primal. Charcoal and oil are made out of ferns that existed at the beginning of life. There are many stories about plants having memories. If this is true, ferns could tell us a great deal about our beginnings. Like forests, ferns may contain secret knowledge. – Anselm Kiefer
This installation engages Kiefer’s raw and powerful materiality with text in this 2,500 sq. ft room built by the Margulies Collection specifically to house this piece. The charcoal pouring out of one of the structures references the human instinct to hoard fuel. “Carbon, Coal for two thousand more years” is inscribed.
Paul Celan’s The Secret of the Ferns (1946):
In the vault of swords the leaf-green heart of the shadows looks at itself. The blades are bright: who would not linger in death before mirrors? Also in jugs here a sadness that’s living is drunk to: Flowery it darkens up, before they drink, as though it were not water, as though here it were a daisy of which darker love is demanded, a pillow more black for the couch and heavier hair…
But here there is only dread for the shining of iron; And if anything here still glints up, may it be a sword. Were not mirrors our hosts, never we’d empty the jug from this table: let one of them crack and split where we’re green as the leaves.
Anselm Kiefer installation and detail.
