Anselm Kiefer at Anthony D'Offay and Stephen Conroy at the Marlborough.

NO HALF measures for Anselm Kiefer: his London dealers Anthony D'Offay have filled all four of their West End galleries with his new paintings, and rented a hectare or two of the Riverside Studios to accommodate his sculpture, The High Priestess. Kiefer, whose West German studio is a converted factory so large that his assistants traverse it by bicycle, needs the space. The High Priestess alone weighs 30 tons.
 
Enter Studio 2 of the Riverside arts complex and you become Jack stepping off the last rung of the beanstalk and into the giant's castle. You find yourself in what appears to be the library. Kiefer's sculpture takes the form of a gigantic steel bookcase, some fifteen feet high, stacked to bursting with vast tomes. Kiefer's books have been fabricated from soft, mottled lead, which gives their leaves a weathered, aeons-old parchment look.
 
Aged 44, Kiefer has been widely hailed as the greatest artist of recent times; The High Priestess, re-portedly five years in the making, is doubtless meant to convince even cynics of his claims to the undisputed heavyweight championship of the art world, a magnum opus with the emphasis on the magnum.
 
Kiefer's bookishness goes back some years. He has often used words in his art, scrawled quotations or snatches of language disposed across the scarred and pitted canvases that are his more usual form of self-expression. But The High Priestess is more tantalus than library, since the viewer is not allowed to browse through any of the books on its shelves. For an idea of their contents you need the book of the sculpture (Thames & Hudson, pounds 50; there are reference copies available at both venues), a viewer's instruction manual complete with reams...

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