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Lot Essay
Executed in 1981, Johannis-Nacht is a delicate and poignant example of Anselm Kiefer's powerful, mixed media practice. No theme has occupied Kiefer as profoundly as that of the tragic characters of Margarete and Shulamith, a subject founded on a powerful memorial to the Holocaust entitled Todesfuge ('Death Fuge') written by the poet Paul Celan while he was interned in a concentration camp in 1945. For Kiefer, Margarete and Shulamith play two opposing figures, inescapably linked by a mystical tragedy. In Johannis-Nacht the female characters have no figurative emanation but rather are invoked by the artist through references to their hair. 'Your golden hair Margarete. Your ashen hair Shulamith is the poem's lyrical refrain. The intertwined wisps of straw represent Margarete, the blond Aryan woman to whom the 'German master with blue eyes' writes. The raven-haired Jewish Shulamith, whom Death in the guise of the 'German master' has reduced to ash, is denoted by the densely applied black impasto. A palpable sense of dramatic tension is added to the nocturnal palette of this work by the contrasting presence of the golden, knotted straw.
Kiefer is an erudite artist, well-versed in mythological, Biblical and literary texts, and often weaves several layers of references into his works. The artist has imbued Johannis-Nacht with further symbolic connotations as its title, which is inscribed on the lower left of the work, refers to June 24th, a date on which both Pagan and Christian rituals are celebrated as it marks the summer solstice and birthday of Saint John the Baptist. Kiefer has described this date as 'a night loaded with myth', explaining that 'They make big straw wheels five meters high, set them on fire on hilltops, and let them roll into the valley. Thousands of them' (A. Kiefer, in interview, July 1997, reproduced in Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper in The Metropolitan Museum of Art exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1998, p. 82).
Kiefer is an erudite artist, well-versed in mythological, Biblical and literary texts, and often weaves several layers of references into his works. The artist has imbued Johannis-Nacht with further symbolic connotations as its title, which is inscribed on the lower left of the work, refers to June 24th, a date on which both Pagan and Christian rituals are celebrated as it marks the summer solstice and birthday of Saint John the Baptist. Kiefer has described this date as 'a night loaded with myth', explaining that 'They make big straw wheels five meters high, set them on fire on hilltops, and let them roll into the valley. Thousands of them' (A. Kiefer, in interview, July 1997, reproduced in Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper in The Metropolitan Museum of Art exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1998, p. 82).