Went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Lauren to see the Anselm Kiefer exhibition. I knew a bit of his work before, from a very brief exhibition at the Musee d'art contemporain of Strasbourg about ten years ago (I will admit, I was probably more interested in skateboarding in front of the steps of the musee) and heard of the parallels between his work and Paul Celan from Pierre Assouline's blog (French novelist). Little did I know that the connection between Kiefer and Celan. There is of course the ashen coloration, the barren, scorched landscapes, but Kiefer also references directly to Celan's poems, such as "Todesfuge" with his paintings "Shulamites Haar" und "Magarettes Haar" or "Der Aschenblume."

Kiefer also talks about his artistic process, such as when he writes the NASA coordinates of stars and draws a line between them, about "writing a mythology" "so that we may live." Because science really doesn't tell us how to live, unlike say religion. We think about Heidegger's assertion that now "only a God can save us." This being a central element in Celan's poetry, it is surprising we do not really see this concern in American poetry, whether the topic of the day is "accessibility" or language being ideologically influenced.

Lauren pointed that Kiefer's paintings were figurative, but not in a realistic manner, or the manner we have been painting since the Renaissance. (It is always nice to visit a museum with an artist who has had this type of training) We both discussed how, because of the sheer size of the paintings, one could almost enter the paintings, but can't. In a way, Kiefer tries to recreate a world, but fails. It is somewhat of how the German poets of Gruppe 47 (Ingeborg Bachmann, Celan, ...) tried to articulate a futility of language ...