Download or read book Anselm Kiefer written by Robin Vousden and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first site-specific outdoor public sculpture ever to be commissioned for the United States from Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) was unveiled in 2019 at the top of Rockefeller Center's Channel Gardens, facing Fifth Avenue. Titled 'Uraeus', the work consists of a gigantic open book with eagle's wings 30 feet in span, both made of lead, on top of a 20-foot-tall lead-clad stainless steel column. Clustered around the base of the column are further outsize lead books, while a large snake coils up the column. Lead is one of the artist's preferred materials for its soft, fluid properties traditionally associated with alchemical transformation, especially its second stage: dissolution. In Kiefer's mind alchemy is a symbol for the artist you have to destroy and then recreate. Uraeus extends his vocabulary of striking mythic forms, presented at an arresting new scale. It explores longtime motifs in his work that, in this context and contemporary moment, resonate in powerful new ways. Kiefer is the most prominent German artist of the generation born in or shortly after World War II, a figure of international standing who was recently awarded the J. Paul Getty Medal (2017).