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Lot Essay
'To my mind, art is the only possibility of making a connection between disparate things and thus creating a meaning... I see history as synchronous, whether it's the Sumerians with their Epic of Gilgamesh or German mythology. As far as I am concerned the old sagas are not old at all, nor is the Bible. When you go to them, most things are already formulated'
(A. Kiefer quoted in A. Zweite, The High Priestess, London 1989, p. 98).
Drawing the viewer into a mythical scene through its expressive textured surface and vast scale, Siegfried vergisst Brünhilde (Siegfried forgets Brünhilde) is exemplary of German artist Anselm Kiefer's important early 'Brünhilde' series. Rich with meaning, the work dates from 1975, the year that Kiefer first began to explore the theme of the heroine from Richard Wagner's opera of the Ring cycle, Ring of the Nibelung.Throughout the late 1970s, Kiefer continued to base his work on the obsessive love between the hero Siegfried and Brünhilde using a rich variety of medium and motifs, examples of which are included in the collection of the Untitled (Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Siegfried's Difficult Way to Brünhilde, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A Valkyrie, Brünhilde is one of the mythical maidens who transport fallen heroes to Valhalla. Having been rescued by Siegfried from a ring of fire and roused from a magic sleep, Brünhilde sacrifices her supernatural powers in order to marry him. At its climax, Siegfried succumbs to his desire for fame and adventure and is tricked into drinking poison that causes him to forget his vows to his wife. The scene marks the moment where the formerly admirable hero assumes new characterizations, Siegfried is shown as fallible and prone to ambition, while Brünhilde becomes revengeful at her wasted sacrifice.
In Kiefer's painterly rendition of this poignant scene, the bone white vessel of potion stands proud against the heavily textural shadowy background. Nestled amongst poisonous red mushrooms, the toadstools can be seen as an allusion to the magical trickery of the bottle's ominous contents. Darkest midnight tones of paint swirl and spiral in the background, suggesting the motif of rings of fire that reoccur throughout Wagner's Ring cycle, and the Ouroboros - a serpent eating its own tail - symbolic of eternal cycles of re-creation. As well as evoking the drama of the narrative, the impasto technique marks a precursor to the materiality of the artist's later work. Rendered in white at the top left hand corner of the painting in the artist's distinctive hand, Kiefer plays on the suggestive potential of these two names, so evocative of great love, and the tragedy of the events that unfold. This pivotal scene in the final opera in the Ring cycle, Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods), has a profound resonance with Kiefer, and one he returned to time again in this period, juxtaposing the human drama represented in words and imagery with a scene from nature. The subject is of totemic importance to Kiefer, and is an important early example in how he calls forth the ghosts of German civilization to explore function and iconography of myth, conjuring powerful visual metaphors for universal suffering and sacrifice.
(A. Kiefer quoted in A. Zweite, The High Priestess, London 1989, p. 98).
Drawing the viewer into a mythical scene through its expressive textured surface and vast scale, Siegfried vergisst Brünhilde (Siegfried forgets Brünhilde) is exemplary of German artist Anselm Kiefer's important early 'Brünhilde' series. Rich with meaning, the work dates from 1975, the year that Kiefer first began to explore the theme of the heroine from Richard Wagner's opera of the Ring cycle, Ring of the Nibelung.Throughout the late 1970s, Kiefer continued to base his work on the obsessive love between the hero Siegfried and Brünhilde using a rich variety of medium and motifs, examples of which are included in the collection of the Untitled (Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Siegfried's Difficult Way to Brünhilde, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A Valkyrie, Brünhilde is one of the mythical maidens who transport fallen heroes to Valhalla. Having been rescued by Siegfried from a ring of fire and roused from a magic sleep, Brünhilde sacrifices her supernatural powers in order to marry him. At its climax, Siegfried succumbs to his desire for fame and adventure and is tricked into drinking poison that causes him to forget his vows to his wife. The scene marks the moment where the formerly admirable hero assumes new characterizations, Siegfried is shown as fallible and prone to ambition, while Brünhilde becomes revengeful at her wasted sacrifice.
In Kiefer's painterly rendition of this poignant scene, the bone white vessel of potion stands proud against the heavily textural shadowy background. Nestled amongst poisonous red mushrooms, the toadstools can be seen as an allusion to the magical trickery of the bottle's ominous contents. Darkest midnight tones of paint swirl and spiral in the background, suggesting the motif of rings of fire that reoccur throughout Wagner's Ring cycle, and the Ouroboros - a serpent eating its own tail - symbolic of eternal cycles of re-creation. As well as evoking the drama of the narrative, the impasto technique marks a precursor to the materiality of the artist's later work. Rendered in white at the top left hand corner of the painting in the artist's distinctive hand, Kiefer plays on the suggestive potential of these two names, so evocative of great love, and the tragedy of the events that unfold. This pivotal scene in the final opera in the Ring cycle, Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods), has a profound resonance with Kiefer, and one he returned to time again in this period, juxtaposing the human drama represented in words and imagery with a scene from nature. The subject is of totemic importance to Kiefer, and is an important early example in how he calls forth the ghosts of German civilization to explore function and iconography of myth, conjuring powerful visual metaphors for universal suffering and sacrifice.