Anselm Kiefer Quotations

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result.

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.

Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

I am of the opinion that there are artists and non-artists. I think that this is the way it always was and always will be. I do not believe that we are in the center of the world. It is possible that there are gods who do not relate to human. As an artist, I believe that it is possible to depict these forces.

Art maybe the only space where an indvidual can be utterly free to question himself, as well as his relationship to his God

The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.

When knowledge becomes rigid, it stops living.

Buying art is not understanding art.

I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history.

As a child I had no toys; our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them.

Art is difficult. Its not entertainment.

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.

I am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven,