Kiefer's Wager: John Hutchinson
Anselm Kiefer. Besetzungen (Occupations), 1969.
Gradually, as the rooms come to house a selection of paintings and sculptures by Anselm Kiefer, the disused brickworks of Kaiser & Böhrer in Höpfingen in the Odenwald will become a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. Not only do the menacing-looking kilns, the massive wooden beams, and the cavernous vaults evoke the visual world of the artist, but the building itself also manifests his concept of elemental change and metamorphosis. Kiefer has already incorporated the brickworks into his work, for instance, by preceding a publication on one of his most significant recent works, Zweistromland (1985/89)[1], with a photo sequence of the factory's interior. These images are both clearly defined and metaphorical. From a purely sober perspective, the photographs show a place where bricks - the first artifacts of humanity - were once made. This peculiarity is essential. On the other hand, the transformative process of brick-making, involving the incorporation of earth, water, fire, and air, has a symbolic dimension of elemental wholeness that is also significant. Furthermore, the correlation between the brick factory and Zweistromland or Mesopotamia is highly symbolic.
Let's consider some facts associated with it. Mesopotamia, the southern part of Babylon, a flat alluvial land bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with the city of Nineveh as the site of the significant ancient library, is passed down to us as the source of Western culture. Almost everything we know today about the highly developed Babylonian culture was recorded on clay tablets there; the common building material was mud, which was dried in the sun to form bricks. The rivers descending from the Armenian highlands deposited ample silt in that alluvium, and through intensive artificial irrigation, the Babylonians were able to cultivate large areas on both banks. But Mesopotamia was also the land of the flood. And the disintegration of Babylonia was followed by centuries of lying fallow. This resulted in the drying up of the once fertile land. All of this is history.
It is precisely this "falling into disgrace" that has been handed down in the myths. Mesopotamia is considered the Garden of Eden, where, according to the creation story, Adam was created from the "dust of the earth". At the end of the Bible, in Revelation, John tells of his vision of a woman sitting on a scarlet beast "described all over with blasphemous names". On her forehead was a name, a mysterious name: BABYLON THE GREAT, MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ALL THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," he reports. After that, I saw another angel descending from heaven; he had great power, and the earth shone with his glory. And he cried out with a mighty voice: Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, and a nest for every unclean and detestable bird.” Adding this meaning, "Mesopotamia" symbolizes the beginning and end of history and myth. The brick factory, filled with Kiefer's allegorical art, will stand for this cycle and its possibility for transcendence.
The process of transformation is never complete in Kiefer's art. Accordingly, his ideas of change and restoration have been constantly modified over the last twenty years: the state of balance, the hidden goal of his artistic work, has become increasingly decisive. Initially, Kiefer focused on German history; today he deals with world history. Nevertheless, these two interests are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they are interconnected. Kiefer's art leads us to new insights, namely that the transformation of German history cannot be achieved separately from that of world history and that neither can be reached without individual freedom.
This involvement is evident from the development of Kiefer's images. Occupations (1969, ill.), a photo series showing the artist reenacting the Nazi salute, frees a symbol of German fascism from the significance of oppression and shows it on a world stage. In The Flooding of Heidelberg (1969), Kiefer juxtaposes images of architecture from the Third Reich with his own studio photos. In Every Man Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven (1970), a saluting figure - perhaps the artist himself - stands under a transparent hemisphere, suggesting confinement and the need for liberation. Gradually, the artist's "presence" in the images is withdrawn. In many paintings created in the seventies, including Märkische Heide (1974) and Varuss (1976), we find paths and traces symbolizing impersonal search and dynamic change. Recently, this impersonal path of transformation has been internalized: it is now found in the wisdom of the lead books of "Mesopotamia" or in the mysterious metaphysics of Kabbalistic symbols.
While his earlier excavation of the Nazi past provoked controversy, it is now the gigantic nature of Kiefer's undertaking, expressed in his extensive work, that provokes.
Although he makes no claim to extravagance in his art, there is no doubt about the absoluteness of his intent. The early work, with its homeopathic attempt to free Germany from its Nazi legacy, may no longer seem as combative as it once did, but Kiefer's current art is still judged by some critics as megalomaniacal and ideologically reactionary. This is perhaps less surprising than it might seem, as postmodern ambiguity is a crucial aspect of Kiefer's strategy. His symbols are not unequivocal, his allegories are often contradictory, his seriousness and high-mindedness are usually tinged with irony. Even Kiefer's ambiguity is characteristic. The ambivalence in his images draws our attention to the shifting meanings in contemporary Western culture, but it also directs us to the unspeakable nature of reality. Meanings blur and merge into each other and fade—just like the physical presence of paint, photos, ash, straw, and lead. And even this fading ultimately serves a higher purpose, a vision that would make all the fragments whole again.
Many of Kiefer’s images deal with obliteration, reflecting the despair of much postmodern art. However, Kiefer's emptiness—burnt fields, wasteland, clay pits—is a beginning, not an end. There are plenty of indications pointing in this direction. Assuming this metaphysical ambiguity is the foundation of Kiefer's work, his images can be seen in the light of modern idealism. Essentially, Kiefer's iconography suggests that matter is nothing but a transitional stage in a process toward complete spirituality. Unlike the paintings of Mondrian or Malevich, whose non-representational "emptiness" can be understood as an absolute plenitude after a brief pause, Kiefer's images do not reveal themselves as readily. Frequently recurring inscriptions within the image undermine the immediacy of visual representation. And one can never escape the historical specificity. Viewed as a system, Kiefer's art attempts to guide us through the courtyard of recent history, using myth to address questions of existence. In other words, the only way to a spiritual vision is through the world. The kingdom of God cannot come until reality is completely transformed.
Yet, after twenty years, there is no doubt about Kiefer's artistic potency in presenting his visions of transformation. Can we then assume they are more than just chimeras?
Kiefer's examinations of German history and culture must be seen against a unique societal backdrop of guilt and repression. The period between the end of World War II and Adenauer's assumption of power in 1949—known as the "white years" of German history—was remarkable for two gaps in national consciousness. The first void arose from a lack of community spirit, as the bombing of German cities and the unconditional surrender of the German army replaced the Nazi ideal of the people's community with a pursuit of individual interests. This phenomenon was part of an even larger vacuum, a kind of national amnesia, a suppression of the immediate past. Not only did individuals—both men and women—refuse to recall the atrocities of the Third Reich; it was as if the ideology, the substance of that past, had been stripped away from them. And since this ideology was not atoned for but merely repressed, it continued to haunt the national consciousness of the Federal Republic for at least 20 years. Inevitably, the manner of dealing with these memories became problematic. Long after German film and the Neue Wilde began raising questions about German identity and fascist past, the Historikerstreit of 1986—a debate among historians about these matters—brought the issue to a head. In the Historikerstreit, some right-wing historians attempted to "normalize" German history by relativizing the "Final Solution." An underlying rightward shift in German politics fueled the entire debate; various splinter groups were determined to cleanse the German past in favor of a reactionary ideological approach. This "processing" of German history, originally a left-wing project, was thus partially hijacked by right-wing revisionists.
Kiefer's revival of fascist iconography caused many of his German contemporaries to turn away in disgust, especially since his pursuit of historical "transformation" could also be interpreted as conservative revisionism. This was probably inevitable, as Andreas Huyssen observed.[3]
“With what seems to be an incredible naïveté and insouciance, Kiefer is drawn time and again to those icons, motifs, themes of the German cultural and political tradition which, a generation earlier, had energized the fascist cultural synthesis that resulted in the worst disaster of German history. Kiefer provocatively reenacts the Hitler salute in one of his earliest photo works; he turns to the myth of the Nibelungen, which in its medieval and Wagnerian versions has always functioned as a cultural prop of German militarism; he revives the tree and forest mythology so dear to the heart of German nationalism; he indulges in reverential gestures toward Hitler's ultimate culture hero, Richard Wagner; and he suggests a pantheon of German luminaries in philosophy, art, literature, and the military, including Fichte, Klopstock, Clausewitz, and Heidegger, most of whom have been tainted with the sins of German nationalism and certainly put to good use by the Nazi propaganda machine; he reenacts the Nazi book burnings; he paints Albert Speer's megalomaniac architectural structures as ruins and allegories of power; he conjures up historical spaces loaded with the history of German-Prussian nationalism and fascist chauvinism such as Nuremberg, the Mairkische Heide, or the Teuteburg forest, and he creates allegories of some of Hitler's major military ventures.”
The controversy would have been much milder if Kiefer’s art had explicitly condemned Germany’s fascist past. But although—and precisely because—his iconography is broken by irony and fragmentation, his images always seem ambiguous, sometimes even elegiac. Thus, many critics have doubted the integrity of his strategy. Other writers, including Donald Kuspit, have supported him. “Kiefer eliminates the arrogant structures inherent in the German psyche by disintegrating them, by turning them against themselves, so that a new beginning can be made in the sense of creating a new human self,” he wrote in 1984.[4] “(He) is, in the classical psychoanalytic sense, working through the nightmare of Germanness towards the daylight of humanity.” Nevertheless, Kuspit also expresses several reservations. “Kiefer is extremely convoluted,” he continues. “His art is an exhibitionistic demonstration of artistic power in the name of general humanity and German strength, in the name of a unique German identity.”[5]
Benjamin Buchloh, a long-time opponent of Kiefer’s ideals, criticizes him from a similar standpoint. “Anselm Kiefer is merely the most famous of the German artists who have adopted those concepts that Habermas described as traditional identity,” he notes. “In the process of restoring those concepts, these artists have created a body of work—now widespread and also influential in North America—that at best can be described as political kitsch. Its appeal seems to lie not only in the restoration of traditional identity for generations of West Germans who would prefer to avoid the long and arduous process of reflecting on a post-traditional identity. The allure of political kitsch seems to be—the key to its international appeal—the restoration of artistic privilege associated with traditional identity, along with the claim of having privileged access to ‘see’ and ‘represent’ history.”[6] But does Kiefer actually seek to rediscover “traditional identity”? Even a superficial examination of his work reveals that Kiefer represents history symbolically: His images are based on historical narratives only to the extent that he hints at the necessity of their transformation. He does this by blurring the distinctions between history and myth. Andreas Huyssen acknowledges this but argues that Kiefer has failed to initiate the transformation he aims for. “Kiefer’s work has brought to life that mystification which suggests that myth somehow transcends history, that it can redeem us from history, and that art—especially painting—is the golden path to this redemption,” he observes. Assuming this promise of redemption explains Kiefer’s status as a contemporary “master,” he concludes that the artist’s escape from history into myth is a—albeit tragic—tacit acknowledgment of a deficit. In this, Huyssen comes close to Kuspit’s and Buchloh’s skepticism but does not accuse Kiefer of insincerity. Huyssen does not doubt that Kiefer’s quest is a form of transformation, which he considers a deliberate reworking. "The issue," he says, "is not whether one should forget or remember, but rather how one remembers and how one can deal with, considering that most of us know this past only through images, films, photos, and representations over forty years after the war. I see Kiefer's strength in his way of processing this problem aesthetically and politically, a strength that must inevitably make him both controversial and extremely problematic."
According to Huyssen, the problematic nature of Kiefer's imagery lies in its "lack of any clear reference to contemporary reality," especially in its current focus on alchemical, biblical, and Jewish themes. He further adds: "Kiefer's unique handling of fascist images seems to extend from satire and irony in the 1970s to melancholy devoid of any irony in the early 1980s. Works like The Staircase (1982/83) and Interior (1981) exude an overwhelming, inescapable compulsion, a monumental melancholy, and a fierce aesthetic attraction," which "exerts something highly meditative, if not paralyzing, on the viewer." According to Huyssen, Kiefer's work is partly filled with self-questioning and painterly self-consciousness, partly also with the sense of mourning that he evokes in the Margarete/Sulamith series (1981), where he "recalls the terror that Germans subjected their victims to." His best works, like Icarus—Märkischer Sand (1981) ""derive their strength from the often unbearable tension between the terror of history and the infinite longing to transcend it through myth." But this vision only raises the hope of redemption, only to exclude it.
The claim that there is no melancholy in Kiefer's art is itself ambiguous. Although Huyssen sees Kiefer's underlying admission of weakness as a kind of strength, he also seems to view Kiefer's highly meditative state of consciousness as a form of entropy, akin to the melancholic "weariness" in Dürer's Melancholia. However, emphasizing this fact may have more to do with Huyssen's worldview than Kiefer's. A humorous relationship to the apparent impossibility of his projects—the lead airplane cannot fly, the Icarus/artist is doomed to fall—emphasizes the radical nature of the alternative Kiefer proposes, as much as it signals his hopelessness. A bleak work like Ways of Worldly Wisdom: The Battle of Hermann (1980) can be seen as a view that non-worldly wisdom can provide us with answers; it could also be understood as a hymn to nihilism or an homage to the glorious German metaphysics. Kiefer's allegories always remain open. The fact that he refers to cultural elements in his work—sometimes clearly, sometimes suggestively—allows for quite controversial interpretations.[7] Therefore, attempting to resolve interpretive conflicts is less appropriate than building a framework of preliminary understanding for the questions contained in Kiefer's images. Of course, such a framework inevitably brings questions of ideology into focus. Necessarily obsolete, because, as Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, every hermeneutic transfers a "surplus" of meaning according to its own "key" framework of relationships. However, the detours of language, myth, ideology, and the unconscious must be explored before there can be an encounter with questions of being and non-being. "History precedes me and my contemplation," writes Ricoeur.[8] One cannot engage in any hermeneutic of "assertion" before faith has undergone a cultural critique, a hermeneutic of "suspicion".
It is evident that Kiefer's depictions of German history amount to a "suspicious" cultural critique to a certain extent. And so, if we follow Ricoeur, it can be concluded that the ambiguity of his symbolism serves a particular purpose. According to Richard Kearney: "Just like something that cannot be possessed, reclaimed, or anticipated, (Ricoeur's) eschatology of the sacred remains the most fitting example of the “risk” of interpretation. Contrary to the teachings of most traditional metaphysics, no triumphant ontology is tolerated here that could break out of the hermeneutic of interpretation. On the contrary, there is a strenuous effort for, as Ricoeur says, a 'militant and mutilated ontology' that plunges us ever more intensely into an internal struggle of conflicting interpretations. Here, an absolute renunciation of what is self-righteously assumed as certain is demanded.[9]
If Kuspit and Buchloh are correct, Kiefer conveys a sense of sacred or spiritual power by reviving old German myths. Thus, he falls victim to reactionary idealism. However, even as his ironic portrayal of myths and cultural icons demonstrates their non-existence in the ontological sense by revealing their immaterial presence, his images have nothing to do with conjuring them up again. As Doreet LeVitte Harten noted, "Kiefer cannot and will not offer a perfect solution, but he can point out its importance and necessity.”[10] Accordingly, Kiefer cites the symbolic power of mythology while simultaneously dismantling individual myths. LeVitte Harten also explains that Kiefer assembles mythological fragments in a way that "reminds one of the analytical method of Levi-Strauss. When we compare the images with the structures of myths, we discover that each work — like the myths — contains various layers or interlocking systems of visual and conceptual kinds, similar to geological structures or psychoanalytic studies... The levels support each other, cancel each other out, explain each other, and by doing so, they reduce history to mere abstraction." She concludes: "By defining Kiefer as a myth-maker rather than a myth-teller, we place him on a level with a bricoleur, as described by Levi-Strauss, who changes the context of things so that they function differently in their new role or design." LeVitte Harten reveals a particular way in which Kiefer's work "transforms" history. If his images function as contemporary myths in the sense of Levi-Strauss, they can — even on an intellectual basis — bring about profound changes.
The idea that Kiefer, like a bricoleur or shaman, creates new myths recalls the influence of Joseph Beuys on an entire generation of German artists, including Kiefer.
Beuys explicitly wanted his art to move society toward a deeper understanding of itself and its problems. While he emphasized the parallels between the nature of the material world and the inner self of humans, he believed that any radical revolution could only occur through self-transformation. For Beuys, the path to solving the world's problems and achieving freedom did not lie in materialism, but in the transformative power of ritualized thoughts and actions: He assumed that there was a connection between humans and the rhythms of the cosmos. The artist — and Beuys believed that each of us has the ability to be an "artist" in our own sphere of life — must create ambiguity between what is commonly considered "real" and "unreal." If one accepts a shaman-like channel between "matter" and "spirit," artistic transformation will not be confined to the intellectual. At the very least, art initiates a psychological change on both the conscious and unconscious levels of thought. Yet despite many points of contact with Beuys' work, Kiefer's images are not constructed in the same way. And as LeVitte Harten has noted, "Beuys concentrated more on survival rituals rather than paths to salvation... (He) never ventured outside the safety framework of his worldview, which remained mythological until the end of his life." Kiefer, on the other hand, finds strength in uncertainty.
By referring to alchemical themes in images like Athanor (1983/84) and Nigredo (1984), he conveys to us that transformation must ultimately take physical form. Although not obvious, alchemy also contains a psychic dimension. "The alchemical process of the classical period (from antiquity to about the mid-17th century) was essentially a chemical investigation into which unconscious psychic material was projected," wrote C. G. Jung. "The psychological condition of the work is therefore often emphasized in the texts. The contents in question are those suitable for projection into the unknown chemical substance. Because of the impersonal, purely material nature of the substance, projections of impersonal, collective archetypes occur. In parallel with the collective spiritual life of those centuries, it is primarily the image of the spirit trapped in the darkness of the world, that is, the unredeemed state of relative unconsciousness felt as painful, which is recognized in the mirror of the substance and therefore also treated in the substance.[11]
Jung was criticized for focusing more on the "psychic transformations" brought about by alchemy than on its chemical properties. Kiefer, on the other hand, tends to emphasize the physical aspect of transformation through alchemy, as seen in many of his works where Nigredo — the blackening effect of fire — is recreated on the canvas. It is not insignificant that Kiefer's interest in alchemy, emerging in the mid-1980s, also signifies a shift from a focus on the self — with the artist as shaman — to an emphasis on a more impersonal form of power. Simultaneously, the idea of art as the sole means of cultural transformation was abandoned.
This new direction recalls Jung's belief that alchemy has much in common with the psychoanalytic process of "individuation," in which "through the renunciation of the earthly goals of the ego and the acceptance of what comes, the individual feels a connection to something beyond the ego, something that lives within and through him.[12] Individuation, usually beginning in midlife, is triggered by the self-regulating principle of consciousness, in which the animus (the active, masculine, "intellectual" drive) predominates. This often coincides with the emergence of insoluble conflicts that can only be resolved through separation from a series of feelings and the attainment of a new level of consciousness. This separation is associated with the subordination of subjectivity to a higher goal. Jungians used the Osiris myth, with which Kiefer engaged, as a symbol for this process. Osiris, whose kingdom was in Egypt (according to Jung, the first half of life is defined by the hero myth), is killed and, after his resurrection, decides to rule the Egyptian underworld instead of returning to Earth. This decision marks a turning point in life where one chooses to relinquish a position of power.
"Individuation" as a means of regaining psychic balance usually involves harmony with the anima, or the feminine, "feeling" principle. This process is not without danger, as Gaston Bachelard noted. "The psychology of the alchemist is that of dreams seeking to realize themselves through experiments in the external world. Alchemical gold is the objectification of a strange desire for kingship, superiority, and mastery, which stirs the animus of the solitary alchemist... The dreamer does not need gold for future social advancement but immediately for an urgent psychological purpose: to be a ruler in the sublime radiance of his animus.[13] This repeats, albeit in different terms, Kuspit and Buchloh's concerns about the megalomania they perceive in Kiefer's work. Jung himself explains this similarly. During "individuation," there is the risk of losing balance, or failing to achieve the "conjunctio," and the danger of an inflated consciousness. "An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and aware only of its own presence... It is hypnotized by itself and thus does not allow for dialogue. It therefore depends on catastrophes to silence it if necessary. Paradoxically, inflation is an unconsciousness of consciousness. This occurs when the latter takes on the contents of the unconscious and loses the ability to distinguish, this conditio sine qua non of all consciousness.[14]
"Inflation," it seems, falls into the same category as the "prevalence of melancholy" that Huyssen senses in Kiefer's art. Jung cites Faust and Nietzsche as examples of individuals who collided with "inflation"... He could have also mentioned Hitler.
The High Priestess, the English title of the sculpture "Zweistromland" (1985/89), is an archetypal symbol of the "wise" aspect of the "anima." This might suggest that we should accept the anima within us and trust its intuitive wisdom. In this context, it is important that "Zweistromland," an ensemble of lead folios, is made from a material that is inherently stable and chemically unchangeable. Lead is toxic and heavy; it is associated with Saturn, with melancholic humor, and in Jewish Kabbalah, lead is the primordial material par excellence. In "Zweistromland," the lead thus balances the clay applied to many of the book pages. (In an accompanying series of photographs from the studio where "Zweistromland" was created, the photos of the brick factory are juxtaposed.)[15] We are confronted with a source of impersonal — or superpersonal — wisdom that contains corresponding knowledge or the "ability to distinguish" in Jung's sense, thereby averting the danger of "inflation." Although this knowledge is difficult to access, it is nonetheless literally and figuratively accessible. The books mostly contain photographs — varied in different ways — that represent comprehensive "reality": They show scenes in Germany and the Middle East, railroad tracks in Chicago, and skyscrapers in São Paulo. However, the impression of "reality" is destroyed by etching and overpainting the photos, so that the images gradually evoke associations of decay and dissolution. Together with images of clouds and water, this creates an effect that suggests atomic energy. All four elements are symbolically represented. When we engage with "Zweistromland / The High Priestess" today, we are led back through time as if past and present are experienced simultaneously in the sense of a "synchronous history." The most disturbing elements within the book pages are some tufts of black hair, which are laden with deadly psycho-sexual significance. They allude to Sulamith, the Jewish woman in Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue," which inspired a series of paintings by Kiefer. Alongside some fragmentary images of nipples taken from a pornographic magazine, the hair is the only figurative element within the lead books.[16]
Kiefer's interest in Sulamith and Jewish history is evident in other new works as well. This is certain. First, the fate of the Jewish people — and especially the Holocaust — is inextricably linked with German history. And then, alchemy and Jewish mysticism share some common ideas. For example, Gershom Scholem, writing about the Kabbalah, expresses that "the soul will encounter the divine only when it has shed all limitations and, symbolically speaking, has descended into the depths of nothingness.[17] This is a clear parallel to the process of the alchemical Nigredo burning out. Referring to later Kabbalistic ideas, Scholem writes: "Redemption could not be attained by rushing forward in an attempt to hasten historical crises and catastrophes, but by retracing the path that leads us to the origins of creation and revelation, to the point where the creation of the world (the history of the universe and the history of God) began to unfold within a framework of laws.[18] It is precisely at this primordial point that Kiefer's nihilism is confirmed.
The Kabbalistic doctrine is famously obscure, but its core message is that everything originates from God; there is no "creation" in the usual sense. There is also no eternal "matter": the "created" world was brought forth through the self-unfolding of God. The Kabbalah teaches the fundamental identity of all things with the Absolute, and not only are matter and spirit fundamentally the same. Thus, what we perceive as the substance emanating from true reality is mere nothingness and illusion, which appears and vanishes like a fleeting shadow. "The will of the Absolute realizes itself in the force of consciousness moving downward through the worlds to fully expand into dense matter. Here is the turning point - it returns in ever-increasing stages of consciousness, into metals, minerals, primitive and higher plants, lower and higher living beings.[19] Kiefer refers to this in images such as Emanation (1984/86) and Untitled (1980/86). The doctrine of Tsimtsum — the process of concentration and contraction, central to the Kabbalistic "creation concept" — is connected with the idea of the "breaking of the vessels," which explains the existence of evil in the world. According to this myth, the rays of divine light that fell into the original space of Tsimtsum were meant to be captured in special vessels. However, for six of the nine vessels, the burden was too great. When they broke, evil, demonic forces escaped and set the multifaceted cosmological drama in motion. The counterpart to this myth is the idea of Tikkun, the restoration of the vessels. Tikkun aims to restore unity to the name of God, which was destroyed when the vessels shattered (the medieval Kabbalist Isaac Luria speaks of the letters "JH" of the name JHWH, or Yahweh, being separated from the letters "WH"). The characters JH, written on the iron skis in Kiefer's painting Jerusalem (1986), are presumably not coincidental.[20]
Thus, in the Kabbalah, we find a precise system of transformation, in which the very creative force is first destroyed, but then the process is reversed. This concept of the nature of the world is reflected in Kiefer's recent works.[21] However, the artist has never used this to explain his work; he follows the alchemical principle of obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius. The viewer must recognize the Kawwana (mystical content) that characterizes Kiefer's intention — and then either accept or reject it.
Even in connection with Kabbalah and hermetic writings, Kiefer does not abandon the historical characteristic. An indication of how he combines these two elements can be found in the following observation by Scholem: "The Kabbalah of Isaac Luria," he writes, "can be described as a mystical interpretation of exile and redemption or even as the great myth of exile." Kiefer prefaced the catalog of his American retrospective with a photographic essay titled "Passage through the Red Sea," in which he seems to suggest that his work can be interpreted as a call to return to the promised land. Images like Exodus from Egypt (1984) point to similar themes. And as these images of exile and redemption are meaningful for all of us, they bring Judaism back to the core of contemporary German culture. Kiefer attempts to mend a "broken vessel" by reassembling fragmented elements of German history. He mourns the Holocaust, as seen in Your Ashen Hair, Sulamith (1981), but at the same time, he celebrates the resurrection of Judaism.
Connected with the "reconstruction of history" that influenced Kiefer's early work, another significant aspect emerges. In this century, German culture has had a problematic relationship with the idea of "spirit." The German people were long proud of being a spiritual nation. However, the claims made in the name of sacred German music and the philosophical and ideological brilliance of German literature were often co-opted by right-wing nationalism — most devastatingly by National Socialism. The political ambivalence of German metaphysics in the twentieth century is vividly illustrated in the development of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, whose thinking in the 1930s underwent the infamous "turn" from the phenomenology of human existence to a phenomenology of language, subordinating human essence to the idea of "being." According to Heidegger, the relationship between the thinking subject and the thought object — which initially exists without intention and rational choice — does not comprehensively describe our usual relationship to things. He suggests that our conscious reflective thinking is typically confined to situations where we lack deeper knowledge of theoretical and scientific matters and questions of being. To avoid such reflections, he argues, is a form of existential "inauthenticity." According to some commentators, this "turn" occurred when he introduced a historical dimension into this system of things. If all "meaning" lies in our existence ("being-in-the-world"), and if contemporary culture is determined by a terminology without value standards, as Heidegger believed, it follows that it attains no "meaning." This stance led to his brief yet disastrous support for National Socialism as the political system that would restore the rightful place of cultural terminology, paving the way for the "question of the essence of being."
In "Being and Time," written in 1927, Heidegger states that one must part with the concept of spirit as an essential element of traditional philosophical vocabulary. Thirty years later, he praised the poet Georg Trakl for successfully avoiding this word. However, Jacques Derrida reveals in a recent study[24] that Heidegger had frequently and positively used the word "spirit" during these years, especially between 1933 and 1935. By showing that Heidegger's "misstep" occurred precisely when his political conviction was most suspect, Derrida reaches a general insight. There is a close connection, Derrida asserts, between the philosophical vocabulary of "being" and political misguidance. Heidegger's persistent opinion that "real" philosophy was exclusively written in Greek and German languages may be why he overlooks the Hebrew word for "spirit," Ruach. For Derrida, Heidegger's etymological stance and his political conviction are closely linked.
Heidegger's "forgetting" of Ruach can be seen as symptomatic of the blind suppression — and attempted annihilation — of the Jewish people during the Third Reich. Kiefer's passion for Jewish history and spirituality shows his desire to atone for this wrong. This desire also reflects a longing for the right to explore questions of "spirit" and "being" independently of guilt. Kiefer aims to transform the serpent of evil into the rod of redemption. His wager is that the miracle is possible.
Notes
1 These photographs were reproduced in Zweistromland, DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1989.
2 J. P. Stern, Germans and the German Past, in London Review of Books, vol. 11, no. 24, pp. 7-9.
3 Andreas Huyssen, Anselm Kiefer: The Terror of History, The Temptation of Myth, in October, no. 48, pp. 25-45. These and all other references to Huyssen were taken from this excellent essay.
4 Donald Kuspit, Transmuting Externalization in Anselm Kiefer, in Arts Magazine, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 84-86.
5 In a recent essay, Anselm Kiefer's Will to Power, in Contemporanea, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 50-57, Kuspit accuses Kiefer of neo-fascism, "The collective Nazi past is the narcissistic core of Kiefer's own identity; his main sense of self is that of the heir to the Nazi past." Among other extraordinary remarks, he assumes that "Kiefer is a successful artist and a wannabe ruler / tyrant.
6 Benjamin Buchloh, A Note on Gerhard Richter’s October 18, 1977, in October, No. 48, p. 100.
7 Kiefer's symbolism has been interpreted differently by critics. The artist himself emphasized in a conversation with the author that his symbols are not meant to be unambiguously deciphered.
8 Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, cited in Richard Kearney, Modern Movements in European Philosophy, Manchester 1986, p. 99.
9 Kearny, p. 107.
10 Doreet LeVitte Harten, Anselm Kiefer, in NIKE, No. 29, pp. 18-19. All other references in connection with Doreet LeVitte Harten were taken from this essay.
11 C. G. Jung, Psychololgie und Alchemie, Walter-Verlag, Olten 1975, p. 542.
12 Anthony Storr, Jung, London 1973, p. 88.
13 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie, Boston 1971, pp. 72-73.
14 Jung, cit. (see note 11), p. 547.
15 Mesopotamia (see note 1).
16 Mark Rosenthal writes in his comprehensive essay in the catalogue on the occasion of the Kiefer retrospective (The Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art New York 1987/88): "Kiefer's interest in the central themes of the Byzantine iconoclasm had already been evident in his art since 1973, when he only named the persons of the Trinity, instead of depicting them. This is reminiscent of the medieval debate as to whether painter-monks were allowed to depict Christian figures. The Byzantines believed that the images were more than mere representations—they believed that the images were the emanation of the deity himself. That is why the worship of images was associated with magic" (p. 76). This idea, combined with the Jewish prohibition of idols, could explain the absence of figures in Kiefer's recent works.
17 Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York, 1961, p. 25.
18 Ibid., p. 245.
19 Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi, Kabbalah and Psychology, Bath 1986, p. 15.
20 Mark Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 160 (see note 16) notes that the initials JH, engraved on the metal skis, stand for the name of the craftsman who made them. This could be the most likely explanation for the existence of letters.
21 As mentioned above, Kiefer is interested in the idea of art as "emanation." His images can be seen as microcosmic forms of the kabbalistic process of transformation: consciousness forms into matter and is brought back to its origin through Kawwana.
22 Scholem, op. cit. (see note 17), p. 286.
23 Anselm Kiefer, The Art Institute of Chicago and Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, 1987.
24 Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit, Chicago 1989.