Landschaften von Kiefer

The BBC broadcast an exhilarating late night programme this week about the German artist Anselm Kiefer. He is an artist with an overabundance of energy, passion and resources which have led to the creation of a 200 acre sculpture park in the south of France which staggers my artistic and architectural sensibilities! Passion and drive are attractive qualities in artists and Kiefer combines these with the good fortune of being born at the very beginning of the German post-Nazi, post-war period, exploring the biggest human and political issues with disarming self-certainty.

Early in October I treated myself to a trip to London and, in preference to the dry video-based offerings of the Turner Prize nominees, I visited the newly opened Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Royal Academy. I had made absolutely the right decision and thoroughly enjoyed my two hours inside the galleries (particularly because it was chucking down with rain outside).

Kiefer is the very opposite of everything I normally stand for - I prefer tiny canvases in vibrant colour, touching on specific people and issues. And I'm proudly an artistic nobody, I have often wondered whether the size of an artist's canvases have a direct correlation to the size of their ego, reputation, workplace and bank balance. Kiefer's 200-acre French estate, hangar-sized studio and collosal artworks suggest he is some sort of art world Bond villian with an ego the size of a large planet, though unfortunately for my theory he comes across in the BBC documentary as thoroughly charming and genuine.

The Royal Academy exhibition consisted of a continuous feast of canvases, generally vast planes of encrusted paint, straw, wire, tar, mud and clay. Enormous sculptural sunflowers came to represent life (maybe mankind reaching to god) while the clay, mud and brickdust represented death and renewal ('dust to dust'). Many works contained sheets of maleable grey lead, no doubt a by-product of Kiefer acquiring all of the lead from the roof of Cologne Cathedral sometime in the 1980s! The physicality of his paintings impressed me most, not only in size but in texture, tangible objects rather than 2-dimensional studies on a flat plane. The centrepiece of the exhibition was a site-specific sculpture combining all of the elements of his paintings and, sublimely self referential, recycling used canvases as the main ingredient of the recipe.

Watch the BBC "Imagine" programme if you can. He's a difficult artist to ignore ...and apparently for the right reasons!

Open Art House

Blechynden Studios, W10

My annual pilgrimage to the London Open House took place this weekend. These days I have a foot in both architecture and art... and I found myself visiting a purpose-built block of artists studios, an Arts Centre and an art gallery.

Blechynden Studios, on the edge of Notting Hill, claim to be the first purpose-built block of artists studios in London, completed in 1999. They looked the part, but the resident artists complained that the opaque glass walls let out too much heat, made worse by the fact the landlord ran out of money during construction and didn't install heating of any kind!

There was a wide mixture of locally produced art on display. My favorites were the colourful paintings of Gabrielle Seymour, of course. Much of the remainder did not appeal, though with my fascination for graveyards I was drawn to Clare Burnett's set of vibrant aluminium grave 'silhouettes', created for an installation at West Norwood Cemetery.

Next was the brand new "Yaa Centre" by Foster Wilson Architects, creatively hidden behind Victorian mews in Maida Hill. Beside the clever and rugged architecture, the visit was an unexpected introduction to the resident Caribbean steelpan orchestra. Downstairs yet another surprise was the Artist-in-Residence, a trained engineer and photographer, who created impressive carnival masks on intricate wire frames.

Lee Jiyen 'Wherever you will go'

My final stop, conveniently close to the coach station, was the famous Saatchi Gallery. The building combined a vast classical portico'd frontage with a modern, multi-level extension to the rear. An oily smell pervaded the ground floor, filtering up from Richard Wilson's intriguing "20:50", a ...erm ...whole basement gallery half filled with a confusing mirror lake of black sump oil!

Throughout many of the remaining galleries were works by a number of Korean painters, sculptors and installation artists. Top of my favorites were Lee Jiyen and her incredible people-infested photographic montages. Equally enthralling were the clever 3D painted images by Hong Sung Chul, painted on taught string.

After all that, I needed a good snooze in a darkened National Express bus!