We had Anselm Kiefer to dinner tonight. Tim Marlow interviewed him about his life and his forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy. It turned out that in his childhood, he had wanted to be first Jesus and then the Pope and then decided that it was better to be an artist. Born close to the Rhine, he studied constitutional law at university, influenced by the writings of Montesquieu, and only subsequently attended art school. In other words, he came across as an intellectual first, and an artist only to realise his intellectual vision. Tim asked him if he was a painter of the Sublime in the Burkean tradition. He denied this, but there is surely some truth to it. At least I discovered that the exhibition I remembered of his work at the Riverside Studios in the 1980s did really exist and wasn’t just an effect of false memory.

Tim Marlow and Anselm Kiefer in conversation at the Royal Academy. © Red Photographic

Dinner for Anselm Kiefer at the RA. © Red Photographic