Some texts don't translate. They are only symbolic, as with--Anselem Kiefer, Remembering the Future, borrowing stalks of wheat and grasses, tall sunflowers on single stems above with patches of paint as rock or mud patched brown and greens and blue swirls, all grained rhythms of the natural in motion, collage pieces of foil, silver, gold, glued, painted, stuck on, peeled off recurrent color notes are black, white, gray, and rust; and their surfaces are rough and slathered with paint, plaster, mud and clay.
Old and new clay with porcelain interiors, but exteriors of lava, gravel and cobalt specks pressed into the new, that stretch above two feet, stretch into cylinders with shoulders and mouths, cut, then compressed, the shoulders lowered into the body, the base informed for the climacteric event (Robert Lowell) of its vulnerability, the weak spot we see, shows its mortality, prevented as much as possible, but inevitable in all, hence the tear, the slump, the complete collapse of the shell. In composition the shaping hands are full, and need braces, later extracted, remnants of two by fours, sponges and props to support the landing. If the tower lands hard it needs to be put back up on its base, made double and triple to support the weight which now in diameter can be as wide as the tower was high, but it has to touch the ground too, so an edge tilts down, otherwise it will fall in the heat of the fire.
There is a measure of scale. If big they are a measure of ourselves. If we were big they would be small, so big or small are a slight measure. If we photograph the small close up we make it big. These works are the scale they are from the point of view of what will carry wrapped from the studio to a car to drive to where the real work is done in a garage, not by machines, but by stretching, for if, or when it falls, it can’t be moved until it drys. The scale is the car and the weight carried to the car. Exiting the building they extend above the head. There are no associates or helpers, hoists or lifts or pulleys or rollers. The work is not a part of any social situation.They are speed dried though after 48 hours and are ready to go. The skin skein, the onion simultaneous all happening at the same time comes many into one, one into many, expands and contracts separately and together.
The compositions being performed at a studio some miles from their
finishing point at another studio, where they are finished and bisqued, are limited to what will fit in the back of a car after composition,,
Another limit on size is the weight. One, Boxcar, molded around a 35 lb. cement block 8-inch
by 8-inch by 16, was double that in weight. At end however it sagged and broke and and had to
be put back Humpty Dumpty style and made a good Boxcar.
