The Metaphysics of Light and the Melancholy of Creation in Anselm Kiefer

Abstract

The article examines several works by Anselm Kiefer (Sol invictus, Engelssturz, Luzifer) and certain lines of his production in light of a philosophical hypothesis: that both certain thematic motifs (the sun, the sunflower, the seed, the angel, the sky, the saint) and certain artistic techniques (the use of straw and lead, the incorporation of debris and waste into the pictorial material…) should be interpreted through a metaphysics of light which, in a very traditional way, regards shadow as the extreme of light but not as the opposite of light. It is, moreover, within the framework of such a metaphysics that Kiefer’s numerous theoretical references to philosophy, alchemy, theology, and Renaissance magic find their full coherence.