The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Image: © Painters / Alamy Stock Photo
The present work belongs to Anselm Kiefer’s acclaimed oeuvre which predominantly grapples with some of the darkest moments in the 20th century history. Johannisnacht was created in 1986 at the time when Kiefer’s work increasingly focused on mythical and mythological themes. Johannisnacht is known in English as St John’s Eve or Midsummer Night and refers to the night before the summer solstice, the longest day of the calendar year. In Germany, this night is celebrated with rituals deriving from both pagan and Christian traditions. The holiday was celebrated by the Druids with bonfires, which signified the marriage of heaven and earth. In Christianity, Johannisnacht is celebrated as the birth of Saint John the Baptist, who in turn played an important role in the Bible in the arrival of Christ. Perhaps also indicative of the Christian traditions is the depiction of the bird in the upper part of the painting. The eagle is often associated with St. John the Baptist as an emblem of baptism, salvation, and redemption.
A single dried fern dominates the composition, replacing the image of Saint John the Baptist with the shield fern (known in German as Johannisfarn or ‘St. John’s Fern’). Kiefer considers the fern to be an important signifier:
“The first trees were ferns. They are primal. Charcoal and oil are made out of ferns that existed at the beginning of life. There are many stories and folktales about plants having memories. If this is true, ferns could tell us a great deal about our beginnings, like forests, ferns may contain secret knowledge. But they are complex in relation to Christian symbols of light. They grow in the shade. On the evening of Johannisnacht, the devil goes out into the fields and spreads fern seeds. This creates a certain chaos. Ferns remind us that we also need darkness.”
Johannisnacht highlights Kiefer's fascination with history as well as his focus on the materiality and the visual complexity of the mediums he uses. By placing the textural fern on a dark lead background, referencing the night sky, Kiefer presents the plant as an emanation and natural symbol of divine energy and life. Similarly, Kiefer sees lead as a versatile “spiritual substance” which represents to the melancholy temperament and sphere of Saturn. In alchemy lead is used as the primary material for the opus magnum, the manufacture of gold, thus symbolising the raw material of a magical transformation process. Similarly, lead represents for the artist a kind of universal field that, united to the fern, radiates a divine aura. With the emphasis Kiefer places on the fern, Johannisnacht, and lead, this work foretells much of Kiefer's work in the late 1980s and alludes to his later great explorations of mythological themes and use of symbolism which repeatedly proliferate the artist's ongoing dialogue with the past.
