Anselm Kiefer

Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

Buying art is not understanding art.

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.