The view from the cafe of the Tate Modern, with its panoramic collision of old (St Pauls), new (Millennium Footpath) and under construction (the countless cranes and probably a few skyhooks too), can sometimes make all but the best works in the collection seem trifling. By the best, I mean Max Ernst’s delicate collages and frottages, Giacommetti’s gravity-defying skeletal figures, Joseph Beuys’ monotlithic ‘Lightning,’ and Cy Twombly’s ‘Four Seasons’ which is currently not on display (instead, I was delighted to find his series of Mushroom collages). In comparison, I feared that the arte povera pieces newly grouped on the fifth floor under the title ‘Energy and Process’ might collapse under the weight of expectations, their delicate, humble materials unable to support the weight of ‘art/history’ (both usually capitalized). Happily, the rooms actually provide great pleasure and significant insight into the movement, as well as the trends in art on either side of that era that inform and in turn were informed by it. Most significantly, the vast artists room by Anselm Kiefer returns him to the Fluxus/Arte Povera continuum within which his work is most properly situated.

Despite the inexplicable reduction of Mario Merz’s contribution to a single, rather non-representative piece, and the choice to ignore completely the shared concerns of the Nice School, Tate’s Arte Povera holdings shine in a well-balanced display that gives equal attention to the stars and lesser-known figures in the movement. Redolent in its simplicity, Alberto Burri’s ‘Sacking with Red’ seems more sensual than I remember it, its sacking seeming to cover a figure of some kind, whether it be human or horse depends on ones sensibility. And Niki St Phalle’s ‘Shooting Painting’ still looks vital and fun nearly fifty years later - its vivid, almost frivolous colours undercut by a vigourous surface energy that makes it more than a novelty. Eva Hesse is also represented by a somewhat simple piece, ‘Tomorrow’s Apples’, and a larger, more typical sculpture ‘Addendum,’ but it is Michelangelo Pistoletto’s piece ‘Venus and the Rags’ comprised a faux-classical sculpture turned away from the viewer and towards a stack of second-hand clothes, that sets the mood for the more interesting, sculptural component of the showing. Its simplicity is enigmatic - is it a simple feminist-era joke playing on the figure’s nudity, or counterposing the hard shell of ‘high culture’ with the warmth and softness of ‘craft’?

Giuseppe Penone is an artist who continues to intrigue, in no small part because of the ready access to the AGO’s Galleria Italia, which contains at least one outstanding work and a number of representative pieces hung in what is easily Toronto’s most dramatic setting. His pair of trees at the Tate have the same contemplative poetry as their Toronto counterparts, and hold their own alongside a room full of ‘anti-forms’ (to use the Tate’s own phrase). His mastery of classical technique also highlights the limitations of some of his peers, but Arte Povera was never about technique, perhaps it was even anti-technique in its own way. Barry Flanagan’s rope piece is again lush yet simple, a long, thick length of hemp rope twisted into a floor sculpture, supposedly he dyed it himself though the colour seemed arbitrary to my eye. Keith Sonnier’s ‘Red Flocked Wall’ - earth-encrusted (actually red-painted sawdust, according to the museum website) and semi-transparent, leaning into the wall - is poetic and satisfying, membranous and possessed of the delicacy that the best of these pieces exude.

Jannis Kounellis’ artist’s room displays both his strengths and weaknesses - at his best, there is a simplicity there that verges on something profound, as in his untitled piece comprised of a doorway filled with stones; is it a barrier or an excavation? Either way, the materiality of the stone, the simplicity of concept and execution marry to create a pleasing visual game that exceeds the sum of its parts. Other of his pieces though, such as bedsprings hung against a vivid yellow canvas, merely seem like Rauschenberg if he’d run out of ideas.

Everything else seems to recede into the background upon turning the corner in the Anselm Kiefer’s artist’s room PalmSonntag. I don’t know if it’s the sheer scale of his ambitions, or his formal excellence, or the shock value of placing a 30-odd foot palm tree on its side, but it overwhelms, in the literal sense of the word. The room is swathed in 39 6 by 4 foot panels across two walls, encased under glass are a myriad of Kiefer’s obsessions, desiccated flora and roots, dried mud cracked and painted an even earthier ochre tone, handwriting, and a smattering of little girl’s dresses and the other symbols that repeat through his four-decade long ouvre. The overall effect is breathtaking, as if there is more here than can be contained within the viewer.

Perhaps it is the epic scale of some of Kiefer’s work that compels so many critics and historians to relate it to the neo-expressionism of Penck, Immendorff, and Baselitz, a fit that I’ve always felt was uneasy - after all, his obsession with materials, and the related collage-like qualities of those same works has always pointed towards Beuys and away from Baselitz (whose show last year at the Royal Academy confirmed for me that he is a minor artist with a good publicist). Kiefer’s best work is in the tradition of the land artists of the 1960s, such as Robert Smithson and Richard Long, and fits easily with the found materials of the Arte Povera artists he is situated beside at the Tate, though it confounds easy categorization as it takes the modest materials of one movement and blows them up to the scale of the other. Never a purely painterly artist in the sense of his fellow-travelers such as Richter and Baselitz, it always seemed to be a bit of a shoehorn to fit him up as a neo-expressionist, though the co-opting of certain aspects of his technique by the American would-be-neo Julian Schnabel seemed to draw a tentative line from the machismo of Penck and Baselitz to the more contemplative, though no less aggrandizing work of Kiefer. It may turn out, I predict, that Kiefer will outlive the art market trends that have already led to the waxing and waning of Baselitz’s and Schnabel’s (among others) reputations, because as much as it is easy to point to the capital h History embodied in Kiefer’s work, there is also, in no particular order, the presence of sensuality, a certain lyricism often evidenced in the handwriting and slightly kitschy objects attached to the surfaces, a love of plastic materials whether paint, mud, lead or paper, and a technical mastery that vastly exceeds that of Baselitz and Schnabel combined. All of this combines to make his work highly experimental, and to resonate long after the physical presence of the work recedes into memory, the totality of the work exceeds the sum of its components. PalmSonntag seems to exemplify these qualities, and on this occasion it certainly stood out as the singular piece on display at the Tate Modern today, June 10th 2009.