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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Online Collection

Mar 26, 2020 – Aug 31, 2021

Monumental pieces from the Guggenheim Bilbao collection are now live, including closeup features on James Rosenquist’s Flamingo Capsule and Anselm Kiefer’s The Land of Two Rivers. With each click through Kiefer’s powerful, allegorical landscape, for example, his creative process is explained. The painting is built up with many layers of ochre, and encrusted with lead and zinc. The artist then sent an electric current through the metals, which created ebbs and ripples, and granulated the zinc. The names of the rivers are in the painting—the Tigris and Euphrates, arteries of the Fertile Crescent that feed but also flood the land. Kiefer’s otherworldly work holds both destruction and creation. —E.C.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Man from Naples,” 1982. Courtesy of Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.