The German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s work can be described as “a brooding meditation on taboo subjects like genocide, the perversion of art and culture for political ends, the overpowering burden of history, and, naturally, the Holocaust.” But we prefer to describe it simply as “a huge bummer.” Kiefer’s monumental works often incorporate fragile materials like straw and wax as a way of representing the futility of the artist’s quest for immortality. As a sculptor, Keifer’s preferred medium is lead, which emphasizes in the most literal sense the weightiness of his subject matter. Recurrent images of barren fields, railroad tracks, homes aflame, newspaper clippings, and the names of both Norse gods and ordinary individuals connect his general theme of man’s vanity and insignificance against the backdrop of human history with the horrors of Germany’s Nazi past.
The titles of Kiefer’s work often reflect his preferred topics of artistic grandiosity and human frailty, recently with an added overlay of religious mythology. Current paintings include “Palmsonntag” (Palm Sunday), “Der Brennende Dornbusch” (The Burning Bush), and a series of dour works named for the obscure modernist poet Velimir Chlebnikov.
What then is to be done about the gloomy, suicide-inspiring paintings and sculpture of Anselm Kiefer? How are we to retitle them to suggest that perhaps the vast sweep of history will end happily and not with the extinction of mankind at its own hands and the scourging of man’s works from the face of the Earth by the remorseless hand of a righteous Old Testament God?
The American painter Thomas Kinkade, known to his legion of fans by his copyrighted sobriquet as the “Painter of Light,” has a rare gift. Not for painting. His mass-marketed cornball pastel-hued lollipops are justifiably reviled by critics and anyone who takes art seriously. In their own way, the paintings of Thomas Kinkade are as upsetting as those of Anselm Kiefer. But he does have a flair for cheerful titles and so we have borrowed a few of Kinkade’s evocative and upbeat titles and given them to some of Kiefer’s best known works.
We think you’ll agree that when you imagine, say, a pipe-smoking lighthouse keeper strolling through one of Kiefer’s scorched landscapes trailed by a little girl wearing open galoshes and a cocker spaniel puppy, the world no longer seems to be such a depressing, lonely, and savage place.
Here are three of Kiefer’s best known paintings — “Twilight of the West,” “Melancholia,” and “Brunhilde’s Grave” — furnished with new, better titles taken from popular Thomas Kinkade artworks:
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- The Enchanted Cottage
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- Blossom Bridge
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- Christmas Memories
Kind of takes the curse off it, don’t you think?
