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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

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Anselm Kiefer
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: March 8
Artist
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Sculptor
Anselm Keifer
Construct
Constructs
Ruins
Symbols
Beginning
Ideas
Debris

More quotes by Anselm Kiefer

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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.
Anselm Kiefer
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The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.
Anselm Kiefer
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Art maybe the only space where an indvidual can be utterly free to question himself, as well as his relationship to his God
Anselm Kiefer
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Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.
Anselm Kiefer
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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.
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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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 am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.
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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Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.
Anselm Kiefer
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I believe in empty spaces they're the most wonderful thing.
Anselm Kiefer
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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.
Anselm Kiefer
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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.
Anselm Kiefer
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I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.
Anselm Kiefer
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When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.
Anselm Kiefer
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History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.
Anselm Kiefer
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I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.
Anselm Kiefer
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When knowledge becomes rigid, it stops living.
Anselm Kiefer
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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.
Anselm Kiefer
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Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.
Anselm Kiefer