In Kiefer’s aesthetics, books themselves are sacred, as well as the texts they carry. His art conveys this feeling by accentuating the “thingness” – to use Heidegger’s term – of letters, words and texts. When we look at the enormous books he has sculpted in recent years from sheets of lead and other metals, they tell us that their sacred quality exists in their textures as much as it does in the texts within.