安森‧基弗

Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London

Acquired from the above on behalf of the present owner in 1989

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although there are slightly less blue undertones in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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“He uses photography not only as a means for gathering imagery but for its indexical relationship to memory…the making of photography is in effect an alchemical process and this is as important as the image itself.”

Anthony Brown quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, White Cube, Anselm Kiefer Aperiatur Terra, 2007, p. 55.

Intriguingly invoking ancient legends in conjunction with an acute awareness of twentieth century German history, Siegfried’s Difficult Way is an immensely powerful and haunting work by Anselm Kiefer. Depicting a railway line vanishing eerily into the distance and utilising an intriguing mix of media – photograph, lead and wood – the present work is imbued with multi-faceted layers of complex literary and mythological symbolism. Kiefer returned to the theme several times in this period, creating a unique book with the same title in 1977 alongside a series of mixed media works, all of which feature either the railway as central motif or a winding path. Within Kiefer’s distinctive artistic dialectic, in which the horrors of the Second World War are redolent, the railway track takes on an additionally grave significance, one that Kiefer himself has outlined: “Our historical knowledge… determines our way of looking at things… We see railway tracks anywhere and think about Auschwitz. It will remain that way in the long run” (Anselm Kiefer quoted in: Nan Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, Works on Paper in the Metropolitan Museum, New York 1998, p. 77).

The title of the present work alludes to the Teutonic myth of Siegfried, immortalised by Richard Wagner in his opera of 1857. The heroic Siegfried, born of sibling lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde, sets out on a quest which culminates in his rescue of Brünnhilde: born a goddess as the daughter of Wotan, Brünnhilde has been relegated to mortal status and placed in an enchanted sleep by Wotan as a punishment for helping Siegmund and Sieglinde. As the finale to his ‘difficult journey’ Siegfried fights through the ring of flames which encircle Brünnhilde, who embraces her own mortality by accepting his love. Ultimately Kiefer’s conflation of ancient saga with highly emotive elements of Twentieth Century German history raises profound questions about the very nature of civilisation itself, as well as humanity’s attempts to come to terms with the darkest elements of its past.