Completing the Break from Modernism: Kiefer and Prince

I recently wrote this essay for my graduate Art History course.

The transition from Modernism to Postmodernism was not a clean, singular moment in time; rather, Postmodernism confronted and superseded Modernism over a period of two to three decades. Postmodernism had completely come to the forefront by the late 1970s and early 1980s. The defining work in this period heralded a return to representational image making, and the archetypical examples of this practice come from German Expressionist painters and the New York photography gallery, Metro Pictures. Most specifically, German painter Anselm Kiefer completes the break from Modernism through his retrospection and denial of the Modernist aesthetic; similarly, the work of Richard Prince represents an American artistic shift away from the progressive utopian vision of Modernism.

Born in 1945, Anselm Kiefer belongs to the generation of German artists who did not personally experience World War II, but who were profoundly shaped by its immediate aftermath at a young age. This group of German artists included Jorg Immendorff and Georg Baselitz, who began producing paintings with both autobiographical and culture-specific symbolism and subject matter. Anselm Kiefer amplified the use of Germanic references within his art, and in doing so, further distanced himself and his work from the dogma of Modernism.

Kiefer’s 1988 painting Wayland’s Song (with Wing) is one of the best examples of his complete  disregard for Modernism. Although this painting was produced almost forty years after the end of World War II, it reveals that dark memories and guilt continue to haunt both the artist and his country. The composition of Wayland’s Song makes much of the canvas a blackened, burned field – perhaps a war-torn battlefield. Kiefer also includes a large wing in the composition, referencing the Scandanavian Eddas and Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nihelung. These deliberate culture-specific references to World War II and Nazi Germany directly contradict Modernism’s call for subject matter devoid of references to time and place. The dark color palette gives the painting a brooding, mournful feel; moreover, the erratic, irregular brush strokes generate a very chaotic feeling. In addition to these characteristics, Kiefer employed a combination of materials in producing Wayland’s Song, including oil, emulsion, straw, photography, canvas, and lead. Certainly this combination of materials shows little concern for Modernism’s goal of formal purity. Measuring almost ten feet high and more than twelve feet wide, Waylands’ Song (with Wing) overwhelms the viewer with its sheer volume and weight, much like the artist’s guilty conscience overwhelms and burdens himself as a German citizen.

As Anselm Kiefer and his fellow German Expressionists borrowed from Germany’s history, symbols, romantic tradition, and mythology, American artists were simultaneously creating art centered on a similar yet different concept and process of appropriation. The New York City gallery Metro Pictures featured the work of several American artists who favored photography over painting as their medium of choice. Richard Prince took this process of appropriation to the extreme, employing “rephotography” to compose and produce his art. By rephotographing existing imagery and recomposing it to suit his own purposes and express his own views, he represented the American turn from Modernist art-making.

Richard Prince’s 1980 photograph Untitled (Three Women Looking in the Same Direction), provides a good example of his Postmodern approach. Untitled features three separate images of American women from the shoulders up, all turning to face the left side of the frame. The separate photos are arranged in a horizontal row, and all three women appear to be of approximately the same age and ethnicity. Richard Prince has appropriated each of the images from separate contemporary print advertisements and has combined them to create a new message, thereby removing and undermining the original intent and messages of the advertisers. By questioning the messages and motives of the original advertisements, Richard Prince distinguishes himself and his work from the progressive, utopian thinking of Modernism. Instead of expressing his hope and faith in humanity’s progress, the future, and technology, he is employing technology and mechanical processes to express doubts about America’s future. Specifically, he questions the consumerism and marketing hyperbole that continue to dominate American language and culture.

Anselm Kiefer’s paintings and Richard Prince’s photographs reveal much about the cultures and societies within which they have lived and worked for the past several decades. Wayland’s Song (with Wing) demonstrates that the national and individual sense of war-guilt following World War II lingered and perhaps amplified for decades after the end of the war. Untitled (Three Women Looking in the Same Direction) raises equally important doubts about the direction America is going and the manipulative power of mass media. Modernist art critics considered painting such as Kiefer’s “bad” because it deliberately denied the Modernist aesthetic in favor of personal expression, and rephotography practices such as those employed by Prince sharply contradict Clement Greenberg’s call for unique, formal purity in Modernist art. Certainly, such works as Wayland’s Song (with Wings) and Untitled (Three Women Looking in the Same Direction) represent more than a relapse into an obsolete past. Kiefer is in fact thinking and painting retrospectively instead of progressively thinking-forward as a Modernist painter would, but his work is cathartic to the artist, his country and the viewer. Prince is contemplating his culture’s future, but does not display Modernist faith in progress. By acknowledging the viewer’s potential for active engagement with artwork, both artists again separate themselves from Modernism while also placing value on the viewer’s experience and dialogue. In doing so, Kiefer and Prince have demonstrated that art can, and perhaps should, be judged by criteria outside of the formal purity and aesthetic experience of Modernism.

Bibliography

1.Fineberg, Jonathan. Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000.

2.Swartz, Anne. Art 701: Contemporary Art. Savannah College of Art and Design, 2009. http://ecourses.scad.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_33616_1%26url%3D. 27 January 2009.

3.Kiefer, Anselm. Wayland’s Song (with Wing), 1982. http://www.burrac.com/ah/45/45.htm. 31 January 2009.

4.Prince, Richard. Untitled (Three Women Looking in the Same Direction), 1980. http://www.splicetoday.com/pop-culture/artwork-richard-prince. 31 January 2009.

One Response to “Completing the Break from Modernism: Kiefer and Prince”

1. sandra407 says:

   September 9, 2009 at 8:20 am

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