Surface Tension: Works by Anselm Kiefer from the Broad Collections and the Harvard University Art Museums

The postwar German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) began using photography in the late 1960s while still a student at the Art Academy in Karlsruhe and continues to use it today—not as an end in itself, but as a powerful raw material. Combining his own, as well as appropriated, photographs with an array of opaque and tactile materials, he subverts their depictions of reality and awakens surprising relationships and tensions. This exhibition, presenting a selection of works primarily from the 1980s, explores how these combinations produced not only stunning visual complexity, but also new variations on Kiefer’s characteristic themes derived from literature, history, and mythology. Drawn from the collections of Edythe and Eli Broad and from the Harvard University Art Museums, the installation features early gouaches, a suite of imposing lead-and-photographic works, and a massive book of photographs reworked with ash and acrylic.

Organized by Laura Muir, Charles C. Cunningham, Sr., Assistant Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. A brochure accompanies this exhibition.