Spiritual Lessons from Anselm Kiefer for Architectural Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper examines the spiritual works and practices of the German artist Anselm Kiefer and the lessons they provide to architectural thinking and doing in educational settings more and more driven by reductive material control. Considering Kiefer’s emotionally charged works, and their ability to speak about a larger totality, the text examines the relationships between material and space, material and history, material and language, that emerge in the artist’s working methods as a model for architects concerned with achieving spiritual awareness in a secular world. Through works and spaces experienced during the author’s visit to Kiefer’s former home and studio, La Ribaute, the paper examines how his work is a part of greater paradigmatic, spiritual works of theoretical architecture. By virtue of questioning the more banal practices of modernity, the author discusses how Kiefer’s acts of creation enrich our understanding of the processes used to conceive architectural atmospheres that involve linguistic, expressive, and indeed spiritual possibilities that have not been previously considered in relation to representational making.