mianoti:

Anselm Kiefer * [+]

Zweistromland / Land of Two Rivers

installation, mixed media, 1985-1989

[…] Throughout his career Kiefer was a maker of books, one-of-a-kind works like medieval manuscripts. His most monumental expression of this interest is “The High Priestess/Zweistromland/Land of Two Rivers”. This sculpture consists of two bookcases (labeled after the rivers Tigris and Euphrates) containing about two hundred lead books, all on a superhuman scale. Some of the books were blank; others contained such things as obscure photographs of clouds or dried peas. It was a many layered work dealing with the artifacts of knowledge. […] *