{"id":1161,"date":"2026-05-07T19:04:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2026-05-25T20:34:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T20:34:37","slug":"visiting-the-leaden-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/2026\/05\/07\/visiting-the-leaden-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting the Leaden Library"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Notes on a visit to Anselm Kiefer\u2019s former studio, now exhibition site at Barjac<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After unsuccessfully trying to get tickets for over a year, we finally arrived at La Ribaute next to the small city of Barjac in southern France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former silk factory and several hectars of land in were used from 1995 to 2008 by the German artist. The site is now available for visitors. Spread out across the enormous estate are pavilions dedicated to single artworks or groups of them. Nothing is there by chance, even heaps of rubble are a carefully-staged part of the Gesamtkunstwerk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the buildings are connected by an extensive underground network of tunnels. Some of the tunnels have been excavated to form sculpture halls. Two buildings of the main complex are connected by a huge rusty steel tube on stalks, reportedly to allow the artist to cross between buildings during bad weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These highly symbolic connections contribute to the maniac energy to transform and connect things that radiates from the site. Kiefer\u2019s works are very explicitly anchored (or burdened?) by references to mythology and literature. Large groups of artworks referred to the Kabbala, Greek mythology, or poems by poets Paul Celan or Ingeborg Bachmann.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recurrent themes are battlefields, German history, the connections between stars and earth, new life rising from the ruins, memory and forgetting. Kiefer once claimed he has not created the perfect artwork yet, therefore he has to continue to work in variations and series. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Taking photos is not allowed, which creates the nowadays unusual situation of a group of people not constantly regrouping for good shot positions and posting on social networks. The artist simply does not need this kind of advertisement and rightfully insists on his copyright. The result is people moving differently, just watching, listening, and imagining, not focusing and posing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, pictures of Kiefer\u2019s art is all over the web, so there is no need to add anything here. That\u2019s why there are no real photos on this page, just some AI ornaments not really corresponding to Kiefer’s rough-surfaced aethetics, which interstingly seems to be difficult to reproduce. Just lean back and let your imagination work. If you need to, follow the links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/eschaton-foundation.com\/fr\/eschaton-fondation-anselm-kiefer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/eschaton-foundation.com\/fr<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.thecollector.com\/exploring-anselm-kiefer-playground-ribaute-barjac<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Top 11 personal highlights<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Majestically overseeing the landscape, a leaden book, pages opened in a stalk, with leaden wings spread out. Other leaden books spread around on the floor, in between them a viper. \u201cOuraeus\u201d<\/strong> refers to an Egyption cobra deity, symbol of divine authority. Sacred knowledge transcending reality. (There is another edition of it on Rockefeller Square<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A library with shelves full of leaden books, leaden poppy stalks laying across them: \u201cMohn und Ged\u00e4chtnis\u201d<\/strong>, a poem by Paul Celan. The dialectics of forgetting and remembering. By the same title comes a (downed?) fighter airplane carcass overgrown with poppy stalks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An amphitheatre<\/strong> with doors on the different levels, formerly Kiefer\u2019s main workspace. Somewhere between ruin of a mesopotamian monument and a concrete factory. We were not allowed to look inside the doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWomen of antiquity\u201d<\/strong>: headless, armless plaster torsos, in fact empty upright wedding dresses, spread out all over the area. Placed on top of them, distinguishing objects such as a polygon for Melencolia (by connection of D\u00fcrer), a pile of lead books for Sappho etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMerkaba\u201d<\/strong>: a pile of staircase flights, topped by by leaden books. It refers to a school of jewish mysticism and the throne chariot of God .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collapsed concrete staircases<\/strong> with steel armaments as brusque monuments of the failure to rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A room with the five stages of creation in the Kabbala<\/strong>: from an amorphous lead flow cast to the kabbalistic tree of life with ten “sefiroths” in the form of clay vessels. One vessel broke which is the moment evil entered the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho does not have a house now, will never construct one<\/a>\u201d<\/strong>, after a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke: a ruin of a small stone cabin, surrounded by magnificent paintings of autumn imagery, including yellow leaves in thick oil paint brushwork, one of the more recent additions on the site and my favourite, together with a series of paintings circling around the Rhine\/Gold<\/a> <\/strong>theme, using actual gold plating and oxidized lead alchemy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The women of the revolution\u201d<\/strong><\/a>: in one of the excavated caves, two rows of lead beds, some filled with water, marked with the names of women involved in revolutionary activities. At the end of the room an enlarged photo of Kiefer overseeing a mountain panorama, reminding of C. D. Friedrichs \u201cWanderer above the sea of fog\u201d, from Kiefer\u2019s early years when he raised scandal by posing in a Wehrmacht uniform showing the Nazi salute<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The seven heavenly palaces\u201d<\/a><\/strong>: teetering towers of concrete elements cast using transport containers. Architecture at the same time striving for height and facing its instability or even destruction. Pieces of one of the towers that actually fell down are exhibited in their own pavillion (\u201cThe Wave\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n

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A remarkable place to visit. This is Kiefer in his most concentrated form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notes on a visit to Anselm Kiefer\u2019s former studio, now exhibition site at Barjac After unsuccessfully trying to get tickets for over a year, we finally arrived at La Ribaute next to the small city of Barjac in southern France. The former silk factory and several hectars of land in were used from 1995 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visited-exhibitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1186,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions\/1186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeckeria.org\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}