Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles (That Obscure Clarity That Falls from the Stars), 1996

Born in Donaueschingen, Germany in 1945. Fundamental questions about the human condition, inserted into a broad cosmic context, appear throughout the work of Anselm Kiefer. In Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles (That Obscure Clarity that Falls from the Stars), 1996, the artist investigates the inexorable path of matter, from decay to new birth.

Quoting a verse written in the 17th century by French playwright Pierre Corneille, Kiefer celebrates the poetic force of the oxymoron “obscure clarity,” which unites in a single vision the opposing concepts of darkness and light, symbols of death and life.

The juxtaposition alludes to the secrets of alchemical science, on the basis of which what is dead putrefies, but it is precisely this condition called “nigredo,” or black decomposition, that gives way to the so-called “albedo,” the shining glimmer of new life.

A vision of a majestic cosmic wave, the work describes the movement of creative energy through the use of thousands of sunflower seeds, microcosms of life inserted into the macrocosm of the universe. MB