Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)

Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz examines the legacy of German-Jewish culture in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Positioning Kiefer as a deeply learned artist who encounters and represents history in painted, rather than written form, Lisa Saltzman contends that his work is unique among post-war German artists in his persistent exploration of the legacy of fascism. Formally, thematically, and philosophically, Kiefer's work probes the aesthetic and ethical dilemma of representing the unrepresentable, the historical catastrophe into whose aftermath the artist was born. Kiefer's work mediates the relationship between a deeply traumatic history that he, as a German born after World War II, and his post-Holocaust spectators cannot fully know, but to which his work bears witness and provides access.