Great Art: Anselm Kiefer’s Lead Books Sculpture of 85-89

Great Art: Anselm Kiefer’s Lead Books Sculpture of 85-89

The title of the work is really: The High Priestess Zweistromland and yeah, it taken from 1985 to 89 to complete it. I’m giving some of my most fave artists now a second blog post in the next few or that’s what I’m planning right now to do. I did one art gallery post last year but they need another one at least before I move on to some other’s. Discovering them at art school by someone name dropping them or just raiding the library. This work is insane each book is made of lead but you need a forklift to look at them, if you were to psychical take them of the bookshelf. The bookshelf itself to hold all these weights god knows? The art gallery’s themselves who have shown this work have to reinforces their floors or it would cave-in on itself! Last time I posted Kiefer, it was lead paintings. So yeah, it’s a bit of a theme for him. He’s been a working artist since 60’s/70’s and is still currently living, here’s link to my last post of him for more bio and the paintings I shown last time.

tumblr_inline_pk27mhoh5c1qjjvuc_500
Detail of The High Priestess Zweistromland.
5d8334e1f7693ee273a33a74f8e50409
More detail of The High Priestess Zweistromland.
tumblr_nzbsl4bxmu1svw4szo1_640
Pages of one the books of The High Priestess Zweistromland.
dfpaio0nqpqlhlfoza7w
Front on and full photo of The High Priestess Zweistromland.

Ole Robert Sunde on Anselm Kiefer’s The High Priestess Zweistromland video. What is he talking in? For all my Euro readers/followers, they can understand but you can really get a good look at it in this video too:


OK, you get a song as well as art today! I’ve picked German band Einstürzende Neubauten ‎with song called Sand of 1985 which is a Lee Hazlewood cover. My vague reasons other that it’s the same year and both are German, Kiefer sometime uses sand in his artworks too but not in this one. Anyway I remember, when EN was touring Australia a few years ago, they couldn’t bring their drum kit with them which was made of solid metal because it weight too much. What they did was just  get someone to make a whole brand new metal drum here. Nope, they didn’t even play this song on that tour!

Cheers! 🙂

4 responses to “Great Art: Anselm Kiefer’s Lead Books Sculpture of 85-89”

  1. thebiscuitfactoryonline Avatar

    This guy is amazing. A one-off. Looking back through the pics, I love Iron Road and Osiris and Isis. Great post William.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. William Avatar

      Oh yeah, he’s great and i will post more of his art sometime? Glad you enjoy them! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  2. EclecticMusicLover Avatar

    Wow, such a bizarre but fascinating work of art! How did he get his hands on that much lead?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. William Avatar

      i don’t know but i was inspired at art school by this and i when to local scrap metal shop and got some, burned in down on the backyard BBQ pored on some of my still wet oil paintings! but then everyone in my share house hated me after because no one could use it because well, it was lead and i kind-of got it everywhere and everyone was like what happen to the BBQ? 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment

a1000mistakes

Well, I'm dyslexic so writing about something I love: Music, might help but it's most likely just full of mistakes. That title is also lyrics from The Drones song called I Don't Want To Change. Oh, my name is William and thanks for having a look.