Merkaba

Details

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945)
Merkaba
titled 'Merkaba' (upper centre); titled 'Merkaba' (on the reverse)
gouache and lead collage on gelatin silver print in artist's steel frame
image: 40 x 33 5/8in. (101.5 x 85.5cm.)
overall: 44 5/8 x 38 1/8in. (103.5 x 96.8cm.)
Executed in 2002

Provenance

Private Collection, Germany.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Beatriz Ordovas

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Lot Essay

"Merkabah is the Hebrew word for "chariot", used both for literal chariots that people ride and figurative chariots that God rides in. Based on Old Testament texts that associate the chariot with the heavens and the throne of God (such as 2 Kings 2:11; Isa. 66:15; Jer. 4:13: Ezek. 1), some apocryphal literature of the intertestamental period began to use the word in reference to some type of mystical ascent to the divine throne. The throne vision in the apocryphal book 1 Enoch 14 (150 B.C.) probably represents the oldest example of such merkabah mysticism, but similar descriptions occur in the New Testament as well (2 Cor. 12:1-7; Col. 2). Similar descriptions of mystical ascents continue to appear in Jewish literature after the New Testament era."

J. Daniel Hays, J. Scott Duvall, C. Marvin Pate in Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times, Grand Rapids 2007.

Merkaba

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Lot Essay

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