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Analysis Of Untitled By Anselm Kiefer

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Description of the Art Work
The art work that was chosen for analysis is called “Untitled” by Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer used woodcut, shellac and acrylic on paper which were all mounted onto a canvas (metmuseum.org). According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Untitled” is classified as a drawing, despite the use of acrylic which is a medium used in paintings (metmuseum.org). The painting is located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art located in New York City (metmuseum.org).
In “Untitled” Kiefer illustrated a man that is laying on the ground, and from his legs several sunflowers rise to the sky. The tallest sunflower in the picture is surrounded by several other sunflowers, some of them possibly wilting and some still thriving. Kiefer colors the center of most of the sunflowers black in the painting. However, other than the tallest sunflower in the image the other ones closest to the sky have transparent centers. Despite the transparent centers of the sunflowers, it is implied that petals exist because of the white that is used to create them.
Personally, when looking at this painting I first noticed the man on the floor as well, and as I continued to observe my eyes followed the stem of the sunflower up. The, first word that came to mind was “rebirth. My first interpretation of this painting was that the man in the painting was dying, and he was …show more content…

An example of Kiefer’s indifference of society’s opinion is his piece Heroic Symbol V (Marlow). In this artwork he paints a picture of a man posing a Nazi salute standing on a field while wearing a World War II uniform (Marlow). The Seig Heil salute was banned in Germany since 1945 and was his first protest towards the denial of Nazism in German history (Marlow). Illustrating the Seig Heil in artwork was sensitive for the time period and because of this critic’s to labeled Kiefer a fascist

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