Anselm Kiefer's Bathtubs Painting

Born in Manchurian city Shenyang, China. Currently lives in San Francisco Bay Area and has been painting for more than a decade and his works is collected in the U.S., Canada and China.Art Inspirations (Conception of Apocalypse Series)What is art about? More precisely, what are my paintings about? I have struggled with this question ever since I started to paint. Having copied famous artists' work, made many still life and figure studies, and having painted for the simple sensual thrill of presenting beauty or ugliness, I am left with the certainty that art is much broader and deeper than these technical accomplishments. For me, art is incomplete if it does not transcend simple depiction of life, and enter the realms of the historian and the social commentator.The intricate involvement with life, the sub-textual social criticism -- unpolluted by overbearing propaganda -- that is evident in the works by artists such as Matthias Grnewald, Albrecht Drer, Francisco Goya, Max Beckmann and Kthe Kollwitz has begun to teach me how to connect myself, as an artist, to the world; and, most importantly, how to perform my duty to the society as an artist, to reflect the world through the expression of my feelings.Growing up in communist China, I lived through the hardship and capriciousness of dictatorship. At the same time, I witnessed the way that for those who closed their eyes to the inhumanity of totalitarian rule, daily life was not always so grim: such people still worked hard, made merry, found time and occasion to smile and laugh. People can adjust to just about anything, finding comfort even in the predictable order of totalitarian society.I thought that my escape from China would put such bitter truths behind me. But the closer I look at the society I live in now, especially in this era of wholesale assault on freedoms that Americans have come to take for granted, the more troubled I feel. It doesn't trouble me so much to know that people in power covet and plot for more wealth and control: that is to be expected. It doesn't trouble me to realize that people in power seek to brainwash the populace to sate themselves on shallow pleasure and hollow profit -- one can hardly think of a more efficient way to dominate the populace than by conditioning them to cease thinking. What does trouble me is that there are so many who prove willing to trample the lives of others to gain money, power, sex, or products they crave.