Anselm Kiefer: The Monument and the Ruin

This event will be held in English.

Co-organized by Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and Gagosian.

Anselm Kiefer in conversation with architectural historian and Columbia professor Barry Bergdoll, exploring the role of architecture and space in the artist’s work.

The exchange will, among other things, address Kiefer’s permanent art installations in the Paris Panthéon, a building which Bergdoll has written extensively about, including in the exhibition catalog Le Panthéon, symbole des révolutions (1989).

Barry Bergdoll is a contributor to the forthcoming catalog published on the occasion of Anselm Kiefer's bicoastal exhibition Exodus, at Gagosian.

Anselm Kiefer’s monumental body of work represents a microcosm of collective memory, visually encapsulating a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions—from the Old and New Testaments, Kabbalah mysticism, Norse mythology and Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan.

Born during the closing months of World War II, Kiefer reflects upon Germany’s post-war identity and history, grappling with the national mythology of the Third Reich. Fusing art and literature, painting and sculpture, Kiefer engages the complex events of history and the ancestral epics of life, death, and the cosmos. His boundless repertoire of imagery is paralleled only by the breadth of media palpable in his work.

Kiefer’s oeuvre encompasses paintings, vitrines, installations, artist books, and an array of works on paper such as drawings, watercolors, collages, and altered photographs. The physical elements of his practice—from lead, concrete, and glass to textiles, tree roots, and burned books—are as symbolically resonant as they are vast-ranging. By integrating, expanding, and regenerating imagery and techniques, he brings to light the importance of the sacred and spiritual, myth and memory.

Barry Bergdoll is a Fellow (2022-23) at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Professor Bergdoll's broad interests center on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on France and Germany since 1750. Trained in art history rather than architecture, he has an approach most closely allied with cultural history and the history and sociology of professions. He has studied questions of the politics of cultural representation in architecture, the larger ideological content of nineteenth-century architectural theory, and the changing role of both architecture as a profession and architecture as a cultural product in nineteenth-century European society.

Bergdoll's interests also include the intersections of architecture and new technologies of representations in the modern period, especially photography and film. He has worked on several film productions about architecture, in addition to curating numerous architecture exhibitions. He has written extensively on the history and problematics of exhibiting architecture, and the history of museological practices in relationship to architecture.

The place

For nearly sixty years, Columbia University students and faculty have come to study, teach, or pursue their research at Reid Hall, an exceptional space in the world of international education and cultural exchange. Our public events draw on the rich resources of the Columbia campus and our local partners, creating a "third space" of intellectual exploration and research that resists easy categorization. Our workshops, lectures, and performances bring together a diverse audience to address pressing issues through creative, rigorous, and open dialogue.

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The views and opinions expressed by speakers and guests do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Columbia Global Centers | Paris or its affiliates.