Front cover of "The Heavenly Palaces: Merkabah" 1990

Editor: This is the front cover of "The Heavenly Palaces: Merkabah" by Anselm Kiefer. It feels like peering through a rain-streaked window onto an endless landscape of grey stone. What do you see in this piece? Curator: It's a landscape alright, but more of the mind than of the earth. The rain streaks could be tears, perhaps, or rivers of thought. Kiefer often grapples with history and memory, almost like a spiritual cartographer mapping unseen realms. What do you make of the "Heavenly Palaces" in relation to that austere landscape? Editor: I hadn't thought of it that way. I guess I was too caught up in the gloom. Thanks! Curator: My pleasure. Sometimes the most luminous revelations hide in the shadows.