A Ship Will Come

Anselm Kiefer

1974 · Watercolor, gouache, and ballpoint pen on paper · Modern and Contemporary Art

In summer 1974 Kiefer traveled to the northernmost region of Norway, the North Cape, on the Arctic Ocean, taking Polaroids and collecting postcards of the stunning landscape for later use in the studio. Here, an image of a cruise ship against the backdrop of a magnificent fjord and the glowing midnight sun becomes the personification of, in Kiefer's words, the "perfect kitsch song of the student revolution" of the 1960s—"A Ship Will Come"—which was popular in the Germany of Kiefer's youth and, for the artist, full of unrealized, even vulgar, utopian yearning.

Artist

Anselm Kiefer

Date

1974

Medium

Watercolor, gouache, and ballpoint pen on paper

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky, in memory of her father, Joseph H. Hazen, 2000