Property from the Estate of David Pincus "Kiefer does not illustrate the myths he represents; he summons them in order to bring myth face to face with history and to prove that, at least in Germany's case, myth was swallowed up in history from the moment it was called upon to play a part in it" (D. Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, London and New York, 2001, pp.129-130). Recalling the Germanic traditions of landscape painting, the following exquisite group of watercolors exemplifies Anselm Kiefer's artistic mastery and academic scholarship while demonstrating the versatility of his oeuvre. Reminiscent of the art of Caspar David Friedrich which depicted the sublime power of the natural world, these intimate paintings are part of a key series of works executed in the late 1970s and early 1980s in which Kiefer sought to explore the nature of German cultural identity in the post-war period. Kiefer is an erudite artist, well-versed in mythological, Biblical, literary and poetic texts. However, no theme has occupied the artist as profoundly as that of Margarethe and Sulamit, 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, Margarethe and Sulamit play two opposing figures, inescapably linked in a mystical tragedy. In Margarethe-Sulamit, the eponymous females have no figurative emanation but rather are invoked by the artist through their inscribed names and references to their hair. 'Your golden hair Margarete. Your ashen hair Shulamith' is the poem's lyrical refrain. The straw-like foliage represents Margarethe, the blond Aryan woman to whom the 'German master with the blue eyes' writes. The raven-haired Jewish Sulamit, whom Death in the guise of the 'German master' has reduced to ash, is denoted by the black line of paint, her scorched locks extending across the paper propelled by the flames of her destiny. Heligabal depicts a fiery seascape, illuminated by an intense orange sun whose acidic glow hints at the presence of actual flames more than the brilliance of a maritime sunset. The title stems from the ancient Roman cult of sun-worship originating in Syria that equated the emperor with the Sol Invictus ('The Unconquered Sun'). Kiefer's intense fascination with the relationship between the worlds of heaven and earth is another central theme in his artistic practice. The architectural structure that hangs in the flaming sky, echoing the classical edifices erected during the National Socialist era, may be read as a portal to a cosmic realm. The arches can also be interpreted as a metaphor for art itself, as for Kiefer, "art is an opening-up between order and chaos, between human and natural, between individuality and history, between heaven and earth" (D. Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, London and New York, 2001, p. 190). The painterly explosion of light and the architectural reference to Germany's fragmented history and tradition combine to present a poignant articulation of Kiefer's art as a poetry of ruins. Die Etsch is an abstracted mountainscape, richly rendered in deep azures punctuated by flares of brilliant red. Die Etsch, or the Adige, is an Alpine river in northern Italy, a waterway which once marked an outer boundary of German territory, its name featuring in an outdated version of Deutschlandlied. Von der Maas bis an die Memel, Von der Etsch bis an den Belt, ('From the Meuse to the Memel, From the Adige to the Belt'). In this work, Kiefer is addressing questions of confused German identity and post-war guilt, issues that preoccupied many of his contemporaries including Georg Baselitz, Eugene Schönebeck and A.R. Penck. These artists strove to break the silence over the impact of the Third Reich on present day Germany, Kiefer here lifting this censorship by inscribing the painting's title across the radiant sky. The bold palette of Die Etsch demonstrates Kiefer's fluent handling of watercolor. The artist welcomed the immediacy granted by this medium, observing "with watercolor you cannot work by levels, you do one level and that's it. You do more and it becomes a failure" (A. Kiefer quoted in B. Cavaliere, Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998, p. 10). Kiefer is particularly aware of the iconic power of landscape. His nineteenth century predecessors had endowed forests, lakes and mountains with a symbolic majesty. In Kiefer's own landscapes, however, sublime splendor is overshadowed by a legacy of destruction and war. As Daniel Arasse has commented, "Kiefer does not illustrate the myths he represents; he summons them in order to bring myth face to face with history and to prove that, at least in Germany's case, myth was swallowed up in history from the moment it was called upon to play a part in it" (D. Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, London and New York, 2001, pp.129-130).

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945)

Die Etsch

细节

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945)
Die Etsch
titled 'Die Etsch' (upper center)
watercolor, gouache and ink on paper
22 x 16¼ in. (55.8 x 41.2 cm.)

来源

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1993