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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
Ruins
Symbols
Beginning
Ideas
Debris
Construct
Constructs

More quotes by Anselm Kiefer

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Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.
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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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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Art is difficult. Its not entertainment.
Anselm Kiefer
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What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
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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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 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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Buying art is not understanding art.
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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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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I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.
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 believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being 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
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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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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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History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.
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.
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