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When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

Anselm Kiefer

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Anselm Kiefer
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: March 8
Artist
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Sculptor
Anselm Keifer
Else
Germany
Ends
Anywhere
Anymore
Subject
Taboo
Became
Nazi
Subjects
Spokes
Interested
Spoke
House
Eras

More quotes by Anselm Kiefer

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As a child I had no toys our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them.
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Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.
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I am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.
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I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.
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History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.
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When knowledge becomes rigid, it stops living.
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Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.
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But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.
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I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.
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Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.
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Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.
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If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.
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I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.
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Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.
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Art is difficult. Its not entertainment.
Anselm Kiefer
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As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.
Anselm Kiefer
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I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.
Anselm Kiefer
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I am of the opinion that there are artists and non-artists. I think that this is the way it always was and always will be. I do not believe that we are in the center of the world. It is possible that there are gods who do not relate to human. As an artist, I believe that it is possible to depict these forces.
Anselm Kiefer
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I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history.
Anselm Kiefer
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Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.
Anselm Kiefer