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Lot Essay
Executed in 1991, Jacob's Dream is a haunting and melancholy work by Anselm Kiefer. The relationship between the realms of heaven and earth is a central theme in Kiefer's artistic practice, yet in Jacob's Dream, as with much of the artist's works of this period, multiple theological and mystical references are present.
The rubble scattered on the base of the vitrine denotes the Breaking of the Vessels, the catastrophic event in the Kabbalah during which the sefiroth, the archetypal values through which the cosmos was created, were shattered. Ascending from these fragments of china and glass, the ladder is a recreation of the Biblical stairway in Jacob's dream where angels climbed to heaven. However, Kiefer's chorus of angels take the form of Lilith and her daughters, figures which first appeared in the artist's work in 1990 and were to recur in various guises throughout the following decade. Babylonian in origin, Lilith grew to become an important character in Jewish mythology. Adam's first wife, and created from the same clay as her husband, she was exiled to live amidst the ruins of civilization as a result of her rebellion against a wrathful God. The mythical women are represented here by doll-sized smocks which are suspended from strings. Their hollow sleeves outstretched like wings, the soiled dresses of Jacob's Dream resemble lost souls drifting in the ether, poignantly invoking the contrast between the individual human life and the deep time of the cosmos.
Anselm Kiefer, Lilith's Daughters, 1991. (c) Anselm Kiefer.
The rubble scattered on the base of the vitrine denotes the Breaking of the Vessels, the catastrophic event in the Kabbalah during which the sefiroth, the archetypal values through which the cosmos was created, were shattered. Ascending from these fragments of china and glass, the ladder is a recreation of the Biblical stairway in Jacob's dream where angels climbed to heaven. However, Kiefer's chorus of angels take the form of Lilith and her daughters, figures which first appeared in the artist's work in 1990 and were to recur in various guises throughout the following decade. Babylonian in origin, Lilith grew to become an important character in Jewish mythology. Adam's first wife, and created from the same clay as her husband, she was exiled to live amidst the ruins of civilization as a result of her rebellion against a wrathful God. The mythical women are represented here by doll-sized smocks which are suspended from strings. Their hollow sleeves outstretched like wings, the soiled dresses of Jacob's Dream resemble lost souls drifting in the ether, poignantly invoking the contrast between the individual human life and the deep time of the cosmos.
Anselm Kiefer, Lilith's Daughters, 1991. (c) Anselm Kiefer.