To the Editors:
Jed Perl, in “A Dissent on Kiefer” (December 1988), cites me from a Times Magazine piece as follows: “I don’t think that any of the contemporary American or European painters is as good as Kiefer. He is my bet.” I never said this. The irresponsible writer of the Times Magazine text “extrapolated” this from an observation that Kiefer was clearly the best of the European Neo-Expressionists of recent years. As the article in question was a Sunday supplement piece, by an unserious writer, I didn’t bother to correct it. I see now that was a mistake.
William Rubin
Director Emeritus, Painting and Sculpture
The Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY
To the Editors:
Having written six times, for as many publications, in praise of Anselm Kiefer, I must presume that I am among the “art-world types” dissented from in Jed Perl’s “A Dissent on Kiefer,” and I would like to reply.
Perl takes the following views of Kiefer’s art and of the motives of those who appreciate it: “neo-Nazi campiness,” “pornographic obsession with Nazi atrocities,” “voyeuristic sentimentalizing of Jewish history,” “romantic infatuation with Nazi kitsch,” and, in approving quotation of a companion at the Museum of Modern Art opening of Kiefer’s retrospective, the incredible sentiment” ‘six million Jews had to die so all these people could wear black tie.’” These are slanders. Perl should be ashamed. He should apologize.
What is Perl’s evidence against Kiefer? The existence of a series of photographs
