Sunflower Symbolism

In Sonnenschiff (Sunship)( 2007; concrete, earth, iron, lead and sunflowers, Barjac, France) blocks of concrete are used to symbolise of power. Kiefer uses dried sunflowers intermingled amongst the bricks, using them to refer to myths and cults relating to the sun . Sunflowers are an element Kiefer repeatedly used in earlier paintings. Throughout history the sun has been related to a higher being. It never dies setting each night and it (the sun) reappears resurrected each morning. Kiefer uses the context of sunlight illuminating through his sunflowers and through the openings in his towers to show that there is optimism that a future does exist. Anselm Kiefer has used vegetation throughout his artist career as metaphors to renewal, fertility

The Secret Life of Plants lead pages are made with stars dotted upon them forming the structure of a cosmic space. The stars are contoured like heavenly plants. The recurring theme of stars in the sky is used by Kiefer; here he is using the firmament to leave its tiny human viewer and their environment in its awe. Because of its sheer scale in proportion to the viewer Kiefer emphasises the difference between the sacral endless heavenly realms to man’s earthly existence. The Secret Life of Plants is an open book. Its open pages containing a language, like any book it is designed to be read. The language Kiefer uses on the pages, the firmament is impossible to read, leaving the earthly viewer with a sense of frustration and at a loss unable to read the language until they pass through their earthly existence and transcend and are resurrected into the sacred realm beyond. It is only after transcendence the language is readable. The plants on the pages are joined using complex numbers and lines, the formulations of them are incalculable, another suggestion of the unreadable. Its complexity is like a maze or labyrinth which Kiefer intended and uses as a reference to poetry and the works of Paul Celan. The connection between Celan and plants had been used by Kiefer previously in his Geheimnis der

I agree with Rosenthal who writes that Kiefer was aware of this and actively used it in his works ‘By the provocative and ironical nature of his work, it is evident that Kiefer accepts and embraces the notion of the modern artist who stands outside society, taunting it,its history, norms, taboos, myths, and ideas about art and craft’ Kiefer early work was misinterpreted in his native Germany, Kiefer as an artist was already an outsider, he further ostracised himself by using themes such as The War, Nazi representation and the holocaust all of which were taboo subjects. Kiefer sculpturally approached this by placing plants in his installations. The isolated plants in gallery and museum settings are isolated, misinterpreted and excluded from nature, Kiefer uses them as metaphors for artists. Just as a gallery or science cannot interpret the mysteries of a plant or unravel the myths, or change its past a gallery can’t unravel the mysteries of the art or change the past myth or history either. Kiefer believes that Art can coexist with the world but it cannot change the