Anselm Kiefer can be seen to resemble David Bowie, in the way that he in some way uses the deeds of the hard Right (in Kiefer’s case Nazism) to create shimmering, juddering images of great depth and vision. His greatest beauties are the tender pinks and dawn colours that he dabs his industrial white-grey pictures of forests and valleys with.
He has a new show on, opening on November 23 at White Cube’s huge, cold space in Bermondsey, London. It will lick the clinical walls with a flame: it is entitled Walhalla, after the great, gold hall that Norse mythology consigned its warriors to. The show wouldn’t be complete without an industrial spiral staircase with which the Valkyries enter the afterlife. Valkyries, legend had it, would decide which warriors would live and which would die.
