Your golden hair, Margarete
| Your golden hair, Margarete |
|---|
| Anselm Kiefer , 1980 |
| Watercolor, gouache and acrylic on paper |
| 29.8 x 40 cm |
|
Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City
Link to the picture |
Your golden hair, Margarete was painted in 1980 by the German artist Anselm Kiefer . The painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) . Your golden hair, Margarete with the format 29.8 cm × 40 cm is painted on paper with watercolor, gouache and acrylic. It shows sheaves of wheat swaying in the wind. However, there is a lot of smoke around the sheaves. The painting is based on the poem Death Fugue by Paul Celan . The poem is about the cruelty in the Nazi concentration camps . Kiefer's painterly interpretation of the poem focuses on thinking about the Holocaust and theHistory of Germany in the 20th Century . The two main women in the poem, Margaret and Sulamith, are also symbolized in the painting: Margaret by the golden sheaves of wheat, Sulamith by the black smoke. The women are intertwined like the sheaves of wheat and the smoke.
History and reception
Your golden hair, Margarete was painted 10 years after Kiefer's photo series Occupations . Through this series of photos, Kiefer's tendency to refer to Germany's history was already clear. Consequently, it is natural for Kiefer to reference them again with the painting.
At the same time that Margarete was painted in Your Golden Hair, Anselm Kiefer had traveled through Europe , the USA and the Middle East . While traveling, he focused more on issues of religion and society and their relationship to mythology and art. During his trips to Israel he focused more closely on Judaism and its teachings and stories. As a result, he found the stories of Margarete and Sulamite. These stories led him to paint a series based on Margaret and Sulamith. Your golden hair, Margarete , is one of the pictures from this series.
Although the reaction to Kiefer's works abroad was relatively positive, in Germany it was initially negative. German critics believed that Kiefer was too interested in the history of the Holocaust, Nazism and fascism and called him a neo-Nazi because he wanted to abolish the German taboo on discussing these topics. Of course it is also the same for your golden hair, Margarete, with its references to the so-called Aryan woman Margarete and the Jewish woman Sulamite. As a work that references topics that Germany was not yet ready to discuss, it is known to introduce controversy.
In the years before the painting was made, there were a few political developments regarding the East-West separation and historical reconciliation. In 1972 the basic contract was signed. The basic treaty was a treaty in which both German states recognized each other as separate parts of Germany. There was also a television series, Holocaust (1978), which dealt with the atrocities and genocide during the Holocaust, and even had a program where historians would answer audience questions. However, most people have still not faced the German past. Most people named the Holocaust as "untrue" and "offensive". People in Germany may not have liked Kiefer's work of art, as Kiefer's greatest work of art is related to reunification and reconciliation with German history.
description
Kiefer mainly used watercolors for the picture, in which there are also many elements of nature to be seen. Although there are very light colors like yellow and blue, the whole picture looks blurry. The clear blue sky can be seen in the background. In the foreground there is also black smoke and sheaves of wheat blowing in the wind. In the middle you can read a script and this script comes from the poem Death Fugue by Paul Celan. This black font is written in italics and lies just above the wheat sheaves.
The script reads “Your golden hair, Margarete”, a line that is written five times in the fugue of death . She hovers over the sheaves of wheat that seem to be the main element of the painting. They are in the center of the picture and they relate to Margaret's hair, as in scripture. Some sheaves of wheat are light gold and yellow, although others are gray. Some are also new and upright, while others are old and withered. The new and yellow sheaves of wheat could symbolize Margaret's hair and the old and gray sheaves of wheat could symbolize Sulamite's hair. It could represent the German love of land.
The smoke is one of the main elements of your golden hair, Margaret . The gray smoke hovers over the wheat sheaves and on the right and the more black smoke is concentrated on the right. The smoke seems to concentrate around the only sheaf of wheat still standing. All other sheaves of wheat are bent by the wind or they are gray and wither. It also refers to the poem Death Fugue . The smoke could symbolize Sulamith's hair or the smoke from the concentration camps, as in the poem. It could also symbolize the entire story of the Holocaust sweeping across Germany (the sheaves of wheat symbolize Germany).
interpretation
The painting contains few elements, but they relate a lot to subjects that are important to Kiefer: German history and mythology and modern works of art about it. Especially at this time, few people realized the tragic story of the Holocaust. In this painting the main elements are the sheaves of wheat, the smoke and the blue sky.
The painting is one of the many by Kiefer who were mainly inspired by Paul Celan's poem Death Fugue (1948). The poem is about Celan's response to the cruelty of the Holocaust, and it was published after Celan was released from a concentration camp.
The sheaves of wheat in the foreground symbolize the two women who are presented in the fugue of death . The writing in the middle of the painting is actually a quote from the poem and explains an interpretation of the work, in which the yellow sheaves of wheat represent the German wife of Goethe's Faust Margarete and the gray sheaves of wheat the Jewish wife of death fugue Sulamith. While the yellow sheaves of wheat are healthy and Margaret is young and innocent, the gray ones are unhealthy and Sulamith is a victim of the Holocaust.
The smoke on the right symbolizes the concentration camps and the effects they create today, and is also a reference to Celan's poem. The narrator of the poem mentions the “smoke in the air” rising from the concentration camp, and Kiefer represents this smoke. Its position and the direction of the air together symbolize the passage of time. The smoke nicely kills the gray sheaves of wheat in the middle, but it still haunts the present because the Germans don't want to discuss their history.
Overall, Kiefer used the poem and its characters to confront German history in the 20th century. He represented Margaret and Sulamite through the sheaves of wheat and smoke and he told their tragic story through his painting.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Your Golden Hair, Margarete. The Met, accessed October 30, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c The Art Story Contributors: Anselm Kiefer Most Important Art | TheArtStory. The Art Story, accessed October 25, 2018 .
- ^ Bonnie Roos: Anselm Kiefer and the Art of Allusion: Dialectics of the Early “Margarete” and “Sulamith” Paintings. In: Comparative Literature . tape 58 , no. 1 , 2006, p. 24-27 (English).
- ^ The Art Story Contributors: Anselm Kiefer Overview and Analysis. Retrieved October 25, 2018 .
- ^ Frank Trommler: Germany's Past as an Artifact . In: The Journal of Modern History . tape 61 , no. 4 , 1989, pp. 725 (English).
- ^ Frank Trommler: Germany's Past as an Artifact . In: The Journal of Modern History . tape 61 , no. 4 , 1989, pp. 725-726 (English).
- ↑ Basic Treaty | 1972. Retrieved November 9, 2018 .
- ↑ Tv View . In: The New York Times . April 23, 1978, ISSN 0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed November 25, 2018]).
- ^ Mark E. Cory: Some Reflections on NBC's Film Holocaust . In: The German Quarterly . tape 53 , no. 4 , November 1980, p. 444 (English).
- ↑ a b Paul Celan: Death fugue . 1948.
- ^ Allan M. Jalon: German Memory: The Art of Anselm Kiefer . In: Southwest Review . tape 75 , no. 2 , 1990, p. 239 (English).
- ^ Bonnie Roos: Anselm Kiefer and the Art of Allusion: Dialectics of the Early “Margarete” and “Sulamith” Paintings. In: Comparative Literature . tape 58 , no. 1 , 2006, p. 30-33 (English).