The conservator’s eye: Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies by the Sea

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The conservator’s eye: Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies by the Sea발음듣기

(soft piano music)[Steven] We're in the large contemporary galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at a really large canvas by Anselm Kiefer.발음듣기

It's hard to even call it a canvas because the surface is so built up that there is no reference to the flatness of the cloth underlayer.발음듣기

[Corey] This looks as much an object as it does a painting.발음듣기

[Steven] If you look at it from the side you can see it angulating, it's relief sculpture.발음듣기

[Corey] It's very thickly painted and Kiefer's certainly taking advantage of the sculptural qualities of the painting.발음듣기

[Steven] I'm not even comfortable calling it paint.발음듣기

When we think about the application of paint we generally think about relatively thin material that's applied with a brush occasionally with a pallet knife.발음듣기

When I look at this surface I think about the tools that one uses to dig in the ground.발음듣기

There is something really earthen about this surface.발음듣기

[Corey] Especially considering the pallet is very earthy as well.발음듣기

And by the way a lot of this is not paint.발음듣기

There's shellac, there's resins that are dripped and sculpted in the surface here.발음듣기

So, painting, question mark.발음듣기

[Steven] And this artist is known to burn his material on the canvas.발음듣기

He's known to apply molten lead to the surfaces of his works of art.발음듣기

[Corey] He also adds a lot of natural materials like straw, which decay and discolor and perhaps become dry and fall off quite rapidly.발음듣기

[Steven] It sounds like a conservator's nightmare.발음듣기

[Corey] Well, in a way yes.발음듣기

If we think back to European traditional paintings from guilds and academies etcetera there are very well codified recipes for how a painter's allowed to make a painting.발음듣기

Part of that is about how to make a beautiful painting but in fact an equal part of it is about how to make a painting that lasts.발음듣기

Because after all, many of these are religious paintings part of their meaning is their timelessness or other ones are commodities.발음듣기

This is a business transaction.발음듣기

You don't want to buy something that falls apart.발음듣기

[Steven] But here in the late 20th and 21st century we have artists who are upending that idea of the eternal nature of work of art.발음듣기

Thinking about the idea that a work of art can change over time.발음듣기

[Corey] In fact, this begins not in the 20th but in the 19th century.발음듣기

This is modernism.발음듣기

On the one hand the idea that an artist can use any material and any process to make a work of art is very exciting because now creative possibilities explode in so many different directions.발음듣기

On the other hand, there are some very dramatic consequences where things don't necessarily stay as structurally sound and stable as they used to since we're disregarding many of those recipes.발음듣기

[Steven] And even here with this painting you get the sense of the stress from the weight of the paint pulling on the under support, which in this case is burlap.발음듣기

[Corey] We're looking at an extreme example of deviation from classical painting techniques.발음듣기

But what's really interesting here is that now in the 21st century especially artists are beginning to find sources of meaning in the aging processes of their materials.발음듣기

[Steven] It's such an irony because now when we have a greater understanding of the chemistry of works of art than ever before in history we're creating works that ever more ephemeral.발음듣기

[Corey] And certainly this is not that new of an idea if we go back to the sculptures of Naum Gabo.발음듣기

Gabo was using the first plastic invented as soon as they were invented.발음듣기

Now, there's no way this kind of idea would ever been permissible if you were working in a guild or an academy because there's no guarantee how that's gonna age.발음듣기

[Steven] And Gabo was interested in them because they were new.발음듣기

But unlike Gabo Kiefer is still referencing traditional materials.발음듣기

This is a vertical canvas, it is still a colored paste that is applied to that surface it is still painting in some respects.발음듣기

[Corey] But as we look in this painting we see huge cracks.발음듣기

In fact we see big chunks of the painting that have fallen off.발음듣기

Now if we can imagine that same chunk if it had fallen off from, let's say a 19th century academic painting, this is disastrous.발음듣기

You can't even see the painting anymore.발음듣기

[Steven] So this raises really interesting questions for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.발음듣기

Does it collect those pieces as they fall off?발음듣기

Does it restore those pieces?발음듣기

Where does it decide to intervene?발음듣기

[Corey] Well, having worked on a number of Kiefer's myself I can tell you yes, we do collect them.발음듣기

But I've worked on Kiefer's that, believe it or not are three of four times as large as this one and I've large chunks of paint that I just can't find where they came from.발음듣기

So I save them, but I've no idea where that puzzle piece came from.발음듣기

[Steven] And Kiefer himself has been somewhat nonchalant in his response saying "If something comes off, let's just put it back on".발음듣기

[Corey] He's inviting paint to fall off these paintings.발음듣기

[Steven] What's the reason behind that?발음듣기

How does the material help to effect his message?발음듣기

[Corey] Kiefer's a very poetic artist and so much of his poetry is about these very dramatic appearances of decay and fragility.발음듣기

So much of his work references this German and Austrian consciousness of history especially the dark chapters.발음듣기

[Steven] This is a painting that is clearly a landscape.발음듣기

We see two Tyre tracks that are moving through the center of the canvas into the distance.발음듣기

We see a black sky at the narrowest band just above the horizon line.발음듣기

So the fields fill our entire view and for me this is always a reminder of the soil of the German heartland which in the 1970s and '80s was a very brave act at the moment when Germany was just coming to terms with its immediate past.발음듣기

[Corey] So many of his paintings addressed these dreams of history that no longer work.발음듣기

It's a kind of nostalgia that he's addressing poetically with these materials that themselves fail crack and fall apart.발음듣기

[Steven] I think it's easy for us to forget how much Germany has contributed to civilization and so many German intellectuals never believed that somebody like Hitler could take power.발음듣기

And it feels like, in Kiefer's layering process this archeology of paint that Kiefer's able to expose those layers of history even as he builds up paint that he knows will eventually fall off.발음듣기

[Corey] On the one hand we can consider this an excavation of a painting on the other hand I think we can consider Kiefer's work an excavation of the German consciousness.발음듣기

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