Suzanne Swarts likes to go beyond the walls of 'her' Voorlinden in search of the most beautiful places to admire art. In MASTERS the museum director shares the experiences of her travels to the most beautiful art places.
Shaking block towers, greenhouses full of works of art, barracks that bear witness to decades of collecting mania, an amphitheater of shipping containers and an underground system of corridors: La Ribaute, the former studio of Anselm Kiefer in the south of France, has been open to visitors since last year.
Thanks to his idiosyncratic visual language, full of references to history, mythology and literature, Anselm Kiefer (1945) became one of the greatest artists of our time. This autumn we will be presenting a major overview of his work at Voorlinden. And to prepare for this properly, I traveled to the picturesque town of Barjac, an hour's drive above Avignon. There is La Ribaute, an area of 40 hectares, where the world-famous German artist lived and worked for many years. In 1992, Kiefer himself found his way to La Ribaute. He thus joined a long line of artists who traveled to the south of France to work there. Think of Vincent van Gogh, but also Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Kiefer moved into an abandoned silk factory in Barjac and initially started working there with items he had brought with him from Germany: photographs, books, unfinished paintings and some pieces of lead from the roof of Cologne Cathedral. But something wasn't right. He didn't feel particularly inspired. In contrast to countless other artists, the southern French landscape did relatively little for the post-war artist.
If the place does not take possession of you, then you must take possession of the place yourself, Kiefer thought. He started to think bigger, work differently and build roads and buildings, plant trees and vegetation and build fences at La Ribaute. And one day he started digging tunnels to connect his buildings and greenhouses above ground beneath the earth's surface. He was inspired by the seven heavenly palaces from Jewish mysticism, where man ascends, loses his hands and limbs during the journey and only his spirit remains. At La Ribaute it works the other way around: you descend and end up in the psyche of the artist. Now there are 48 buildings with various installations on the former industrial estate near Barjac, a labyrinth of tunnels and branches, bridges and towers and various studios in which Kiefer has installed his often breathtaking sculptures, installations and paintings.
La Ribaute soon became much more than a studio for the artist. It meant a different way of thinking and working. This workplace became his playing field, his laboratory. When you walk through the grounds, through the maze of tunnels and try to take in the incredibly large amount of monumental works of art and large-scale collections, you can follow the twists and turns in the artist's head. And that is sometimes quite difficult, I can tell. The artist himself acknowledges that when visiting La Ribaute you can get the feeling that you are getting lost. And he likes that: “If you lose your way, you get a broader view of the world.”
This article is from MASTERS Magazine. The summer edition is a fresh cocktail of entrepreneurship and sport. In this edition, several entrepreneurs from the Champions League of business are reviewed. Including Freddy Heineken and hospitality tycoon Richard Caring, whose expanding empire has been called the 'restaurant equivalent of LVMH'. Doing business is top sport, but top sport is also doing business. Take Formula 1: the sport is increasingly developing into an octopus with arms that touch all aspects of our society. Jaap de Groot investigated how millions are converted into billions. Also interviews with gymnast Sanne Wevers, two-star chef Guido Braeken, hotelier Robert-Jan Woltering, designer Maarten Baas and Rico, together with his Naomy. The 'King of Kickboxing' also turns out to be an octopus (with very strong arms): as an entrepreneur he is active in various industries. “When I look back later, I don't want to think 'I wish I had this or that'. I just want to, boom, accelerate, do fun things, enjoy.” Boom, the new MASTERS: enjoy!
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