In its long illustrated article, the New York Times takes us to a vast estate in France owned by the German artist Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945). For Anselm Kiefer, there is no such thing as an “innocent landscape”. He himself is a child of bombed-out Germany, he grew up on the image of destroyed cities and the reconstruction of his homeland. He sees everything “in the cycle of destruction and rebirth.” In his own estate in the south of France, in La Ribote, Anselm Kiefer spent 15 years of daily life and intense creativity. There, Kiefer created a “labyrinth of his obsessions” from more than 70 works – installations scattered throughout the estate. Kiefer lived on the estate from 1992 to 2007. There was an old silk factory there. There, Kiefer spawned a scattering of buildings and structures in the complex, bearing an imprint. With passages, bridges, streams, underpasses and clearings, the estate is a real labyrinth, a place of secrets and surprises. The excavated Kiefer Estate is now an open-air museum, open from May to October. Now in a state of silence (but also constant work for next season), the sprawling estate sends out images that inspire awe. This is the mysterious and multi-layered world of Anselm Kiefer. The Leaning Towers of the shipwrecks defy gravity and cast shadows on the lake. A large auditorium with films looks like a requiem for a lost world, dried sunflowers and lead books tell about the balance of life and death. In his native Germany, Kiefer is not loved as much as in France. There is a deep connection. Today it is idolized everywhere. He is one of only two living artists with works in the Louvre. In 2020, he received an honorary commission from President Emmanuel Macron to create a piece now in the Pantheon. In France, Kiefer’s work is so respected that Le Monde wrote last year that he was approaching the title of national artist. In the United States, where he is also highly regarded, he is currently exhibiting two exhibitions entitled Exodus at the Gagosian Galleries in New York and Los Angeles.

Views of the world

RICHMOND
Frederick Douglas
An exhibition dedicated to Frederick Douglas (1817/18-1895), who remains a symbol of African American emancipation, opens Dec. 10 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Former slave and later influential abolitionist and human rights activist Frederick Douglas inspired the artist Sir Isaac Julian, who erected a film installation as a tribute.

MONTREAL
Basque and music
The influence of music on the visual art of the American visual artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988), associated with the neo-expressionist movement, is the subject of an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Paris Philharmonic Museum of Music to highlight the parameters of music as symbol, signal, motif, sound in Basquiat’s pioneering work.

VEIN
Alt family
At the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the exhibition reveals the enchanting world of the Alt family with works from the museum’s collections. Jakob Alt (1789–1872), originally from Frankfurt, settled in Vienna in 1810 and began to make a living from his artwork. His sons Rudolf (1812–1905) and Franz (1821–1914) became leading watercolorists. Their watercolors recreate the unique Viennese atmosphere.

LONDON
Magdalena Abakanowicz
In the Tate Modern you can see the legacy of the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017), known as the Abakans. The exhibition brings together 26 sculptures, giving the public the opportunity to join the deep, earthly essence of her work. Abakanovich gave this earthly dimension materials of plant origin, horse hair, ropes, fabrics. This gave an evocative sculptural form with a primal interior.

LOS ANGELES
Views of the Virgin Mary
The Getty Museum presents an exhibition at the Getty Center on how different artists approached the depiction of the Virgin Mary. The exhibition focuses on art inspired by the iconography of the Catholic Church and selects masterpieces. With many works from the Middle Ages and references to the perception of the Virgin Mary in Latin American countries, the exhibition is a biography of the cult.