Anselm Kiefer, Emanation, 1984-86
We recently took a field trip to St. Paul to visit the Science Museum and the Walker Art Center. I've been to the Walker before, and one room contains my three favorite pieces:
Anselm Kiefer, Emanation (above)
Julie Mehretu, Transcending: The New International
Charles Ray, Unpainted Sculpture
So when asked to reflect on a piece that grabbed our attention, I immediately knew I needed to write about one of these three pieces, and I've settled on Kiefer's Emanation.
This piece is absolutely massive in scale- maybe twenty feet tall by 8 or 9 feet wide? I love that I can't take it all in with a single gaze- that I have to crane my neck, tip my head back to see the top, and only standing clear across the expansive room can I see the entire piece at once.
The texture is fantastic- it is anything but flat. Layers, so many layers! I just want to touch it, to feel the rough, the jagged, the smooth: feel the undulations in the application of paint. The color at first seems monochromatic, with different shades and tones of grey- deep, chalky, charcoal- but then I'm drawn to the dirty ivory across the upper portion of the piece.
It reminds me of old pictures of atom bombs: the central plume, foreboding colors: a dark black at the top and deeper colors with white highlights like capped waves of an angry sea across the bottom. There is a definite vertical motion: the plume draws the eye up through the center where the viewer's gaze disseminates at the black edge, then follows the large textural pieces which appear to be falling back to the sea.
The photo I posted doesn't come close to doing this piece justice. You have to get close, really look at the textures- that's what really captivates me.
Word associations I find with this piece:
tempest, torn
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