ection of its beliefs but rather the dogmas — “this is good, this is not good” — which he felt made the quality of belief that much poorer. He turned to kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, “which I found richer, wider, more open”. And now? “I have no beliefs. It’s a black, black hole. You can never know why you are here. These are questions which are completely unresolved. It makes you have vertigo, thinking about this,” he says.
Ten, 20, 30 years ago? He’s 61 now, so he was 50, or 40, or maybe 30, when he decided Catholicism was too dogmatic. Another sure sign of a keen mind. Most of us don’t work that out until we’re at least – oooh, 14 or 15. And wondering why we’re here, in a German accent and, to judge from the picture in the Times, wearing open sandals over socks in the middle of winter, is a sure-fire sign of a towering intellect.
It could drive you mad, I say. “Yes, but if it did I wouldn’t have my art,” he says. “I think of the manager, having to fly around the world every day for his work, thinking about these questions. What a horrible life.”
It’s so much more spiritually meaningful to make wonky towers: then you can sneer at those shallow materialistic fools who make stuff that’s actually useful.
But he’s doing the same thing, just making art instead of negotiating deals, surely. “No, I don’t produce work to get away from the black hole. I produce work in the black hole. In way it makes me more connected to a possible answer. You feel something but you cannot grasp it.”
But, given the recurrence of the themes of apocalypse and renewal, you sense that Kiefer feels some kind of hope. He says Hinduism is his favoured religion now, because it recognises the value of other religions. “Mythology is the only way you can try and understand the connections in the world. Science can’t do that.”
No indeed: science doesn’t provide a religious explanation of the world. Very perceptive. And he’s aware of his own worth, of course:
Kiefer studied law, not art, at the beginning “because I had a genius complex. I thought I was a genius. I never wanted to practise law but I was interested in its construction and philosophy.”
Interestingly, Kiefer studied with Joseph Beuys during the 70s – the great self-mythologiser of modern art. What he’s learnt from the master, clearly, is that in the modern art world the most important step is, first of all, to set yourself up as a genius. With so many credulous art critics around, that’s not difficult. Then, by definition, everything you do, even a wonky tower, is a masterpiece.
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