My conversion

From today a new wing of Mona will open after four years of construction, the whole comprising a giant new artwork by the German Neo-Expressionist master Anselm Kiefer.

My conversion, my Damascene moment, was at Anselm Kiefer’s La Ribaute, on the road to Barjac.

I was there with Olivier and at his instigation (‘It’s the best studio visit in the world!’ and I could hear the exclamation mark), but I only had eyes for Kirsha. We had met a week or so before, in Basel. I had followed her to a party at a mad castle and been escorted from her presence and evicted (‘Gotta go now’). We’d reconvened in Hannover and Münster, and trained south from Paris, all cuddly and coquettish. I really wanted Olivier’s ‘best studio visit’ epithet to be accurate. I wanted to impress this girl.

I needn’t have worried. La Ribaute is big, like Great-Pyramid-big. And, like the Great Pyramid, it’s fully conceived, everything about it adds to the whole. And it’s so whole it’s holy. Jesus overwhelmed St Paul near Damascus, and St Anselm overwhelmed me (and Kirsha) near Barjac.

It’s ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’. It’s vast and detailed and precise and refined and brutal and potent. It’s so potent. Its spirit washed over me and gave me certainty. But it didn’t give me peace.

Our first visit to La Ribaute came four years before Mona opened. I wanted (and I want) Mona to be as commanding, as compelling and as discomforting.

We walked along a tunnel. A row of bulbs provided a dearth of illumination but they provided a direction, which propelled us, until suddenly, awkwardly we stopped. Why? I didn’t know why. The light wasn’t lighting anything. One more step would have plunged us into a giant pit filled with water, but we didn’t take that step. Because the floor wasn’t lit. Jesus Christ. Mona was going to be so drab, so unwhole compared to this. What could we do?

Giving in seemed a reasonable option, but we were into construction in Hobart. I was literally in over my head.

I stole the lightbulb idea for our tunnel, but not the pit. OHS wouldn’t allow such a thing, and anyway, one can only be converted once, and I was already there. A month before, bloody Jean-Hubert Martin had taught us, in Venice, how art should be hung on walls, now Kiefer was teaching us that the walls could be the art, even if the walls were invisible. It was inspired. But I lacked inspiration. And I felt desperation.

Time healed no wounds. Kirsha and I parted—I didn’t see her for three years. Although I didn’t forget about Kiefer (we built one of his works into the fabric of Mona, and put another on a wall), and I didn’t forget about Kirsha, we finished Mona as best we could. And though it wasn’t the Great Pyramid, and it wasn’t La Ribaute, it was good. Desperation, it seems, and perspiration, can partially substitute for inspiration, but there was no elevation, and there was no glorification.

I found myself on another path. Exhibitions came and went, and music, and many things. We extended Mona twice, with Pharos and Siloam, and they’re each about as successful as their names suggest.

More years passed. And I thought about La Ribaute, and how I was sanctified there, and about how few were possessed of the opportunity to be amplified by its joy, since visiting isn’t easy. So I contacted Olivier, and I told him to ask Kiefer if I could build something like the vast concrete amphitheatre there. ‘If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, the mountain should come to Mohammed.’

Our initial budget was $11 million. How hard can it be to build a building very badly? Kiefer, you see, had just piled stuff up to see what happened. We had to pile stuff up and have what happened to Kiefer happen. Which proved to be much harder. And then we decided to fill up all the negative space, all the space that Kiefer hadn’t used, with a library. I really fucked up the original Mona library and I wanted to get this right. At one stage, I wanted to build a new one into a future hotel but I couldn’t afford to. That proved to be ironic.

So the budget became $38 million, and then $55 million, and then $78 million. And now we’re nearing completion, it seems that the budget has grown to over $100 million. Much more than Mona. And much, much more than I can afford. Scope creep. And new ideas. And new works. And … And …

So I’m knackered. And I’ve had my apotheosis. So let’s build a hotel that I can’t afford and suffer some more. But first let us give thanks. As Paul said, presumably about Kiefer, ‘For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever!’

That much glory must be glorious indeed. Maybe I’m exaggerating. You decide. And if you think it’s shit, wait till you see the library.

Header image: Elektra (detail), 2025, Anselm Kiefer