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BATHING IN THE DRAGON’S BLOOD:
PSYCHE AND SOMA IN KIEFER’S THE RED SEA
- © Susana Maxelon, 2005-

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INTRODUCTION.. 1

Background. 2

I   GERMANY’S ROOTS. 3

Kiefer’s Quest 3

Siegfried’ s Quest 4

II   THE ALCHEMICAL VESSEL.. 7

Vas Hermeticum.. 7

The Alchemical Christ 9

The Blood of Christ 10

The Blood of the Dragon. 11

Kiefer’s Blood Trail and Jung’s Red Sea. 12

The Glass and the Cloud. 14

III   SOMA.. 15

The Canvas as Body. 15

Landscape as Psyche. 16

Kiefer’s Body. 17

IV   CULTURAL CONTEXT.. 19

The Lost Father 19

Representation and Remembering. 20

Amfortas and the Land. 21

Cultural Alchemy. 23

Receptacle of the Work. 24

Kiefer’s Voice - To  Speak or not to Speak. 24

Burning Art 26

CONCLUSION.. 28

BIBLIOGRAPHY.. 32

INTRODUCTION

Kiefer’s The Red Sea [1984 –5] is striking in its thematic, as well as visual, power.  Yet it remains a work whose significance has been only partially elucidated, thereby failing to place it, in what might otherwise be, a key position in Kiefer’s body of work. The main critiques, those of Rosenthal and López-Pedraza, the latter a Jungian analyst, reside on Jewish history and Hitler’s invasion strategies.  Whilst recognising - in broad terms - Kiefer’s references to alchemy,  this has so far been neither extrapolated nor specified with relation to The Red Sea.  Drawing on my psychoanalytic background and Jungian studies, I shall attempt to take the archetypal psychology approach further.  This will entail a closer look at the symbols Kiefer employs and their relevance for both the individual and collective psyche. In particular I shall draw on Jung’s insights into the individuation process and his research of alchemical texts which he showed to be an allegory of precisely this process, that is, of individual psychic development.  Additionally, I will probe Germany’s roots, the legends and their mythic precursors, which have shaped the German psyche and which, as I shall demonstrate, underscore The Red Sea and contribute much to its understanding. Such links are further supported by the alchemical allusions  which together give rise to deeper layers of meaning than the events described to date in the background literature.  Given the physicality of Kiefer’s work  I intend also to consider the implications of this, principally in the light of Jung’s stress on the somatic aspect in psychological development. To aid my analysis I shall compare Kiefer’s own rare statements and examine the work  in the context of his body of work as a whole.

Whilst considering the symbolic context and the meaning for the individual  I aim also to look at the temporal and cultural context in Germany and the responses to the work by both German and Jewish audiences and to draw attention to the role of the viewer in determining the final meaning of the work.  In this I shall include some relevant Freudian and Lacanian ideas  and seek to clarify where they do and do not coincide with other evidence and to discuss where Kiefer does and does not circumvent the psychological problems of avoidance they pose.  Finally I shall consider the impact of the position of art itself, firstly in post Holocaust times, and secondly in Hitler’s day.  In these ways I shall adopt the role of Pandora and seek to unravel the complex and disturbing secrets encoded in The Red Sea.

Background

Rosenthal [1987] and López-Pedraza [1996], describe the two pivotal fields of reference: Jewish history and Hitler’s use of a water-tank (together with model boats) to plan a strategy for the invasion of Britain.  Transcribed as a bath,[1] this latter appeared as a motif in  Kiefer’s earlier Operation Sea Lion series including To Genet [1969].  Following a journey to Israel in 1984  to research  Jewish legend, Kiefer then connects the proposed crossing of the English Channel to Moses’ parting of the Red Sea, thus linking the Jewish people to Hitler’s ideation.  The Exodus is again evoked through the first plague in which the Nile water turns to blood.  In the painting  the blood  is that of the genocide.  Suspended overhead is a glass box, which in Operation Sea Lion [1975] is depicted holding three empty chairs, suggesting an absent trinity; here, it contains a white cloud, sign of the appearance of Yahweh, as in the Sinai desert.  But what further mysteries lie hidden in The Red Sea?

I   GERMANY’S ROOTS

Kiefer’s Quest

To answer this it will be necessary to look further into the German psyche, specifically in its temporal context, as well as to investigate the meaning of the various symbols Kiefer employs and their manifold and interconnected  referents. For Kiefer this work is a culmination of his  quest to comprehend the Hitler phenomenon.[2] To  this end he enacted the Sieg Heil in Occupations and in To Genet [both 1969] while in 1974 he visited Norway in search of German legend, uncovering a mythology of warriors and a veneration of heroic death.[3]  Born in 1945, his attempt to unveil the past, and with it, his roots, went to the heart of German taboos. Of half-German origins myself, I could identify with his need to break through the wall of silence which afflicts the Nachgeboren[4].  These themes are seen in such works as Nothung [1973] and My Father Promised me a Sword [1974] which reference Wotan and his son Siegmund (father of Siegfried). The influence of the charismatic Joseph Bueys [1921 – 1986] with whom  Kiefer had studied in 1970, is visible here for Bueys too had confronted the Holocaust [Auschwitz Vitrine 1956 - 1964] and presented a bloody Germanic sword in The Samurai Sword is a Blutwurst. 

Significantly, Siegfried was Hitler’s model for the hero[5]. Reared as a young child on the dramatic and awe-inspiring tale of Siegfried - in lieu of the traditional fairy-tales - this legend appeared to me, evident not only in Kiefer’s earlier work, but here in The Red Sea, and conspicuously so. For what is crucial to the story is that Siegfried, having slain the dragon,                   bathes in the dragon’s blood, and by so doing, soaks up the dragon’s powers, its strength and magical invincibility.  Only a  patch on his back, which he cannot reach, remains visible. Thus, Kiefer’s presentation of bathing in the blood of the Jews takes on a Siegfreid-like resonance.  And in so doing he intertwines German and Jewish legend in a common symbol, crystallised in contemporary conflict.  But this poses the question, what makes the Siegfried tale so captivating, so dark it eclipses the traditional fairy-tale, yet so overpowering it bewitched a nation?

Siegfried’ s Quest

The answer lies in the complex of meanings attached to ‘blood’.  Blood is life, its vivid colour, perhaps biologically determined, has survival value in alerting us to its presence.  From ancient times it has been regarded as the seat of the soul or spirit[6] and has long been used in magical practices.  To drink the blood of a creature is to absorb its qualities[7] but it may also be taken to bind the soul to God or to the devil[8].  Thus it is found in the Christian communion and in the legend of the Holy Grail, reputed to have caught the blood of the crucified Christ.

The Grail legend, its origins lost in the mists of time[9] combines Christian and earlier pagan beliefs.  Each source entails a sacrificed and resurrecting god.  In pre-Christian belief it is the seasonal cycle of death and rebirth of the Sun-god and the land.  These gods, in the Grail legend, are partially grafted onto the wounded King Amfortas (the Fisher King) and his synchronistic link to a dying landscape.

In Exodus 1985 the wasted desert spaces of Judaic topography echo the homelessness of the dispossessed Jews[10]; in The Red Sea the wound of Amfortas becomes the wound of the Jew-as-Amfortas. But pagan ideas about the death of the Sun-god in Winter, leaving the land barren, also influenced German ideals about land and soil.  In the German psyche, Amfortas reads as the death of their traditional heroes and gods alongside their land lost with World War One.  The ensuing demand for lebensraum is akin to a cry for the restoration of the Sun-god. Siegfried stands as the archetypal German, and he is on  a quest to resurrect the German Spirit and the land.  Kiefer’s scorched landscapes, such as Margarete 1981, are also Germanic and reflect the devastated German psyche[11].  This undercurrent of the dying German should not be overlooked.

Turning to examine the Grail Chalice reveals derivatives in the Celtic cauldron of plenty and the communion cup.  The Chalice offers healing and spiritual fulfilment.  In the mass, the wine (like the Nile Water) turns to blood; by consuming it, the celebrant becomes one with Christ. Evidence of Christian influence in Kiefer’s work appears in To Genet (fig. 1), in which the artist, Christ-like, stands on the water. But Kiefer, making a Nazi salute, is mocking Hitler for his megalomania.  In the background, paralleling the figure stands a bottle of wine, emblem of communion[12].

Not only the mouth, however, imbibes; skin too is absorptive.  It is its own injestive system.  Hence bathing  is equivalent to eating or drinking.  For Siegfried, the nourishment was the strength of the dragon.  Intriguingly, in Melanie Klein’s system of thought the unconscious assimilation of aspects of others is described as ‘oral incorporation’ or ‘cannibalism’[13] .  In a psychological sense, it is as if the collective German psyche has unconsciously assimilated the powers of the Jew.

To the Germans, the Siegfried myth offered assumption of physical invincibility.  It can be seen though that underlying this is the even more powerful Grail legend with its promise of spiritual rejuvenation.  And it is this which lends it its numinous power.  We are not then surprised to learn that Hitler regarded himself and his SS generals as Knights of the Holy Grail, nor that he attempted to trace a German lineage back to them as part of his ‘ research’ into ethnicity.[14]  Blood here denotes bloodlines, and it is the abhorrence these investigations inspire which has contributed to the severing of the roots of the Nachgeboren.  Their secrets are buried out of sight with them, but they bleed into the bathing tub also and their silence is as perilous as the latent dangers it obscures

II   THE ALCHEMICAL VESSEL

Vas Hermeticum

To contemplate the Grail  is to invoke a contemplation of alchemy, for the chalice, as a container for transmutation, is (like the Celtic cauldron) an alchemical vessel.  So too is the bath. It contains the medium of purification (water for washing) and is heated like the crucible (heat being the basis of chemical change). 

Jung examines alchemical texts in depth, explicating an allegorical system of psycho-spiritual development. [15] In the Rosarium Philosophorum illustrations of 1550[16] we find the alchemical vessel portrayed as a  bath.[17] The bath suggests self-incubation (as popularised in the sweat-lodges found today).  It can be said to represent a state of introversion in which unconscious content is brooded over and digested[18] - akin to Kiefer’s own absorption in the ghosts of the past. In the Rosarium illustrations, the masculine principle, depicted as King, and the feminine principle, as Queen, descend into the bath, into the mare  tenebrosum, the primal chaos or divine water.  The water contains all things unto itself, like the uroborus which begets itself.  And it can be poisonous.

Aqua est, quae occidit et vivificat.[19]

Not merely a harmless bath but a perilous night-sea journey, the image represents immersion into the unconscious psyche with all its terrors, a descent into Hades in which the aspects of oneself are dissolved or fragmented in the seperatio process.

Applied to the German nation this condition unleashed uncontrollable forces and ‘purification’ took on horrific meaning as it was projected outwards. By contrast, Kiefer’s immersion was a conscious leap, metered by the need to understand.  The concept of immersion links the bath to that of baptism, particularly where the immersion is total, as originated by John the Baptist. There is also the expression ‘blood baptism’ signifying martyrdom.[20] This latter directly confronts us in the painting.

On the other hand transubstantiation to blood occurs in the bath as vas hermeticum or uterus. Here, the homunculus – the reborn self – is gestated.[21] Joseph Bueys, an early mentor to Kiefer[22], had earlier utilised a  bath, symbolically ‘held together’ by plasters, to signify the wound of birth  [Bath Tub 1960].[23] In alchemy, immersion meant a return to a dark (i.e. unconscious) initial state – hence to amniotic fluid.  The sought after gold would be the renewed self.  When the water turns to blood we have the stage of the  rubedo {reddening}, the stage of renewal.  The blood is the aqua permanens in its evolved state, which von Franz[24] refers to as that of ‘Annunciation’. The King and Queen may then unite in their ‘chymical wedding’,[25] the blood as soul (or love) binding unio mentalis with body.[26]

Bueys believed in the transformative powers of art. Kiefer, who makes deliberate use of alchemical processes and referents in his work, portrays a bath of blood and thus presents an alchemical vessel. Into it he puts German and Jewish referents together with the tragedy of their relations. Perhaps he dares to hope for some transformation. Indeed the painting itself might not merely depict but become the alchemical vessel, in other words a forum within which our perspective as viewer can interact and experience transformation.

The Alchemical Christ

Alchemy, like the Grail legend, has links with the mystery of Christ. Christ is the lapis[27]described  in the Aquarium Sapentium1678[28] as undergoing the process in the alchemical vessel:

‘….it is not unfitly compared with Christ when the putrefied body of the Sun lies dead, inactive, like ashes in the bottom of the phial until as a result of greater heat, its soul…..saturates the decaying and all but dead body, and preserves it.  So also did it happen to Christ himself…..on the cross, he was roasted by the fire of divine wrath…..when finally his spirit, with its body dead in the sepulchre, obtained a perfect and indissoluble union.’

Here Christ is linked to the pagan Sun-god whose wasteland has become a nigredo and in which He must undergo the alchemical fires of transmutation.  The phial is equated with the sepulchre which we can equate with Kiefer’s grave-like bath, but here a sepulchre for the Jews,  reminiscent of bunkers and the mausoleum-like spaces of his Sulamith 1983.  Intriguingly the text also describes Christ as:

‘the vilest of all men, full of griefs and sicknesses, and so despised that men even hid their faces from him…..’[29]

This evokes the manner in which the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany and reminds us of the age-old dichotomy that Jesus was a Jew and was crucified as King of the Jews [Matt. 27].  Christ then has become a mercurial or trickster character – Pagan Sun-god or King of the Jews.  And indeed the Rosarium Philosophorum 1550[30], as Jung shows, displays a parallel between Christ and the transformative Mercurius  who arises like a fountain out of the (baptismal) water.  Similarly, he is conceived as spiritual blood on the analogy of the blood of Christ:

‘by the shedding of his own blood he calls back those who are near to death and restores them.’[31]

Mercurius’ soul is dual, like Christ’s, its chemical equivalents being oil and water, reflecting the ecclesiastical use of unguents and consecrated water.[32] Just as grail mythology links the pagan to the Christian so too the alchemical literature leads to notions of Christ and a consideration of Christ leads back to alchemy.

The Blood of Christ

Central to the Grail-Christian link is the blood of Christ. His blood is described by Jung as the ‘quintessence’ or ‘red tincture’.[33] This red tincture, or transmuted blood, is the goal of the alchemist.[34] It is noteworthy that in the Roman Catholic communion, Christ is present not just symbolically but in vita corporea actualis.[35]  Thus the offering of his slain body in the service of God brings about a literal transubstantiation of the consecrated bread and wine into his actual body and blood.  Additionally, the host is mingled with the wine which, as Jung notes, symbolises a coniunctio of body and soul.[36] This is then shared with the celebrants entailing a further mixtum compositorum as they become one with Christ.

As a reading of the painting the notion of communion renders several layers of meaning.  The ‘offering’ becomes the slain body of the Jews in the Germanic Grail quest; the mixtum compositorum of the Germans and Jews in the same vessel through spilled blood unites them like blood brothers awaiting redemption while as viewers we enter into Kiefer’s communion with the issues it evokes - through the heart (or soul).

 The Blood of the Dragon

In the Siegfried story the archetypal dragon (and its potent blood) played a dramatic role. Significantly, it occurs in alchemy too, and in a parallel vein.  Jung.[37] quotes Baslius Valentinus from the Musaeum Hermeticum 1678 as naming the arcane substance or tincture as ‘the red blood of the dragon’.  Jung suggests the dragon represents an early stage of mercurius, that of omnifarous uroborus which eats and begets itself (evoking Melanie Klein’s oral incorporation).  Identified, like Mercurius, with Christ the dragon is ‘filius macrocosmi’, again at an earlier stage of evolution in which it can at the same time dualistically represent a  rival. Out of the dragon’s mouth issue the words:

‘Many from one and one from many, issue of a famous lore, I rise from the lowest to the highest.  The nethermost power of the whole earth is united with the highest.  I therefore am the One and the Many within me.’[38]

Pointing to origins, Jung sees the dragon as both the Chthonic forerunner of the Self and as representative of the masculine principle as filius soli (son of the Sun).  In terms of individuation the masculine within must be slain (mortificatio) as an essential part of transformation, which means overcoming the obsolete and dangerous aspects of earlier stages of development, arising from the liberated unconscious prima materia.[39]  This proves relevant with regard to the German psyche as we shall see. Additionally the dragon is of course the guardian of the treasure, significant to alchemists and analytic psychologists alike as the lapis within.

Analogously, Siegfried embarks on an individuation journey, slaying past error and becoming empowered through the transubstantiated primal chaos, but he is unable to complete the process for, as Kiefer paints, [1975] Siegfried vergisst Brünhilde[40] - and this chilling forgetting of his beloved is a forgetting of his anima or feeling side.  For the Germans, this legend was an inauspicious augury.  In maintaining the patriarchal Siegfried model at the expense of the feminine or feeling side of life, they headed not towards the Grail but into war. And it was based on his understanding of the Germanic psyche that Jung [1936] was able to predict this war.[41] Instead of slaying their over-masculinised attitude in pursuit of psychic balance and wholeness they acted out against the Jews.

Kiefer’s Blood Trail and Jung’s Red Sea

For Kiefer The Red Sea was not the first work in which he portrayed blood. The associations laid by his earlier works form the artistic backdrop to Kiefer’s rendering of blood  which reached crescendo in The Red Sea.  In Varus [1976] a trail of blood on the forest floor inscribes the destructive and self-destructive path of the war-like Germans.  But earlier in Winter Landschaft [1970] it is the artist’s head that drips blood.  López-Pedraza[42] sees Kiefer commenting here on feelings of post-Holocaust  iconoclasm.  This is consistent with Adorno’s[43] observations on the impossibility of meaningful artistic representation after such horrific events.  But is it the artist – and only the artist – who is wounded?  Kiefer also stands as German – perhaps as Nachgeboren – which suggests another reading - a wound to the Germans.  To shed further light on the meaning of this we can begin with the discovery of a short paper by Jung on the subject of the Red Sea[44], that is, the Red Sea as a geographical entity.

Jung writes that the Red Sea was, in fact, of specific significance to the alchemists who regarded it as containing the tincture of baptism, a tincture equated with blood.  This reinforces the alchemical link in Kiefer’s painting. Psychologically Jung’s Red Sea represents the perilous crossing of the unconscious, offering death to those who remain unconscious but rebirth to those who become conscious of their inner opposites.[45]  The flight from Egypt is the Exodus from sin, i.e. from unconsciousness:[46]

‘the Red Sea is the baptism reddened by the blood of Christ, in which our enemies, namely our sins, are drowned.’[47]

The interpretation which follows from this, is that the wound of the German  - as we might have anticipated - is their unexpiated sins (or guilt). Even the Nachgeboren might inherit this.  By putting them into his baptismal Red Sea Kiefer again makes us wonder if he hopes for some salvation – or perhaps more specifically, a saving movement towards greater awareness.

The Glass and the Cloud

Before leaving alchemy and considering the German wounds further there are two additional motifs in the painting to consider – the cloud and the glass box in which it is suspended. Glass may be a metaphor for matter rendered invisible, in other words, spirtualised, but it has a negative meaning also, that of separation of intellect from body and its emotions.[48] This is consistent with Siegfried’s enchantment and its concomitant in the German psychic situation.  The Pillar of Cloud symbol – dripping   in Departure from Egypt [1985] - has been likened to the smoke of the crematoria which turns the sky to a ‘grave in the clouds’ or the ‘black milk of daybreak’ as Paul Celan, an influence on Kiefer, writes in his 1944 poem Fugue of Death.[49] This has the flavour of the incineratio.  But a cloud can be seen in the Rosarium illustrations also and here it is named as falling dew, sign of Mercurius in his heavenly aspect and augury of divine birth descending to purify the black earth, bringing about the whiteness (albedo) that is called air:

‘Here falls the heavenly dew, to lave

The soiled black body in the grave.’[50]

In the painting the cloud’s spiritual reference is reinforced by the quadrated glass frame,  Seemingly Kiefer introduces the albedo into the alchemical equation.

III   SOMA

The Canvas as Body

Kiefer’s works engage us in a rich complex of ideas.  They are also arresting as material objects. The corporeality of Kiefer’s canvases has led to some evocative descriptions. Ottman[51] sings the incarnate nature of The Red Sea in his lyric verse on the painting when he writes:

‘The holocaust is immanent’.

Fisher[52] describes his works graphically as having:

‘a cankerous odour of mortification – of something neither wholesomely alive nor yet quite dead.’

 In considering alchemy and its psycho-spiritual significance it is important to remember Jung’s stress on soma as part of psyche; lapis is not only animus and spiritus but corpus too.[53] The aim of individuation is the differentiation and subsequent integration of the disparate elements of the psyche into the body - in other words, the incarnation of the Self. This quality of embodiedness infuses Kiefer’s paintings. He not only contemplates aspects of the body - the heart [The Starred Heaven 1980] and lungs [Saturn Time1986] - but also uses physical materials as media such as hair [Shulamith 1990] and straw [Margarete 1981]. In The Red Sea Kiefer applies lead, the base metal of alchemy.  Lead has been described as saturnine[54] and as the metal of war.[55] His working processes too, reflect an intense physicality. Rosenthal[56] informs us that Kiefer sees painting as  a kind of alchemical process, using methods of erasure and burning as well as the aforementioned mixing of diverse materials on the canvas. A work of such physical presence may also, of course, constitute a fetishistic object, as Rosenthal further posits, and this is a consideration which will become relevant in examining cultural responses, to which I shall return. This feature of substantiality – as distinct from artwork dealing in illusion – supports the references to transubstantiation and draws attention to their existence as entities in the real world – entities which seem to exude  powers of transformation in their own right.

Landscape as Psyche

So what meaning  does Kiefer’s scorched earth embody within the content of the painting ? Fisher likens it to the scorched psyche – and Kiefer burns Judaic and Germanic landscapes alike. In meditating on The Red Sea we are reminded by Rosenthal[57] of the human suffering depicted in Goya’s pinturas negras. In the Germanic landscapes Fisher discusses the relationship with German ideals of earth and land, rooted doubtless in pre-Christian religion and symbolised by Kiefer with straw [as in Your Golden Hair, Margarete 1981]. Now straw is solar and flammable, suggesting Sol Niger, the destructive side of the patriarchal sun, burning and destroying.  In psychic terms it denotes inflation and drivenness of the ego, misuse to justify the drive of passions, the metaphorical Saturn devouring his children[58] and this is germane here. Such landscapes embody the devastation which has been wrought to the land and psyche alike, a theme I shall return to.

Kiefer’s Body

As noted earlier, Kiefer sometimes interposes his own body into the works and this raises the question as to his own position, both as artist and as subject. In response to such questions Kiefer has said of Hitler [and of Nero whom he also contemplated) that he had ‘to understand their madness’.[59] Beyond that his quest into Germanic folklore is seen as a search for identity and heritage.[60] Saltzman[61] points out that Occupations  - Besetzungen – contains the word besetzung – that is, cathexis. Kiefer’s explorations certainly appear open-ended and soul-searching.  He asks:

‘Am I a fascist?  To say I’m one thing or the other is too simple.  I want to paint the experience and then answer.’[62]

Psychologically he is sited amongst the Nachgeboren, hence, victim of burdensome history, deferred trauma and loss of the ability to be unselfconsciously German.[63] In the works he is the bleeding victim artist [Winter Landschaft 1970] but may also co-exist in participation mystique with the despot-artist [Nero Paints 1974], in which case he stands for a carrier of the collective psychic inheritance, a bearer of the cross of guilt, able to destroy as well as create.  Massacre and crucifixion are then rolled into one psychic passion. In Winter Landschaft Kiefer’s blood drips onto the snow and Celant[64] supposes he is nourishing it, for in his later works his body is evident as a vehicle of mediation and transmutation [for example, Star Picture 1996].  The inexorable role of victimhood eventually finds its conclusion in identification with the figure of Christ and his resurrective powers.  Whilst such an identification contains the risk of psychic inflation it may also be a self-purgative attempt to follow the humble mystic path of the imitatio Christi and at least, to embody the problems, as he did with his enactments of the Hitler salute. And if the conscious body of Kiefer can be the stigmatised vehicle for the collective psyche of the Nachgeboren then it becomes the alchemical vessel of potential psychic restoration.  Although in The Red Sea his body is not represented, this position forms a background to the painting with its strong physical presence and its  allusions to transubstantiation, in which the representative of blood – here, paint – becomes the literal blood of Christ.  It may evoke  not only communion and the Grail – but perhaps The Passion itself.

IV   CULTURAL CONTEXT

The Lost Father

 Embedded in its cultural context, Kiefer’s work has collective as well as individual relevance.  Saltzman[65] registers her current time frame in Germany as one of literature about fathers and the German masculine identity.  She links this to the legacy of an absent or historically tainted father which applies both to the literal individual and to the collective father imago – coagulate of the Führer and his predecessors, the German gods and heroes. As the father is essential to successful emergence from Oedipal dynamics with its attendant development of a healthy ego ideal this means that intrapsychically there is a loss of ego ideal and thus also an injury to self-esteem.[66]  The path in Varus 1976, marked by stains and the names of past German leaders, show that history leaves a trail of blood on the soil[67] while the theme of Icarus, appearing as a palette [Icarus – March Sand 1981] reinforces the notion of a doomed flight of the masculine.[68]  On the wings made by his father he soars only to be burnt up by the archetypal Father, the Sun. 

Saltzman examines whether Kiefer’s works constitute a process of mourning or the repetition compulsion of the melancholic, as explicated by Freud,[69] in which loss is denied through either inability or unwillingness to mourn. From 1975 Kiefer not only painted conflagration but also painted with fire, destroying to create.[70] Thus he made works as ruins or wounded entities (like himself), inflicting on them the masochistic and self-destructive impulses of the melancholic.[71] In Cauterisation of the Rural District of Buchan 1975 the work is a literal wound of burned canvasses bound together in a book.[72]  Kiefer’s use of saturnine lead and his portrayal of crypt-like spaces [Sulamith 1983 for instance] support the melancholic hypothesis.[73] His Melancholia 1988 is a ruined studio threatened by fire and contains a referent (polyhedron image) to Dürer’s 1514 painting of the same name which links melancholia and reason in genius.[74] Is it true that Kiefer reflects the attitude of a nation that cannot mourn its own father – let alone the lost Jew?

Representation and Remembering

For Lacan,[75] denial of loss also means denial of representation (and hence failure to reach the symbolic stage of development) for the loss cannot be signified. This is consistent with the post war taboo of silence.  Representation must pass through the name of the father, [76]but it cannot, and so is lost, along with German identity.[77]  Saltzman aligns Adorno’s iconoclastic feelings that the Holocaust is such a horror that it forbids expression (although Adorno does say it demands remembrance).

Whilst the works may carry elements of melancholia, and iconoclasm may be read as (or lead to) avoidance, Kiefer, does, however, step back and take up this difficult issue as in Iconoclastic Controversy 1960 in which he presents the palette as a web. He resolves the dilemma of representation through symbolic evocations which contain no living creatures and balances consideration of human feelings by remembering through allusion. There is no direct reproduction of what could only be offensive and sensational, not to mention trivialising in an age of sensibilities blunted by over-exposure to shocking images. Instead, as Saltzman observes, loss stands glaring by its absence.  There are no Jews in the works.  In The Red Sea, neither are there any Germans.  Even their little model boats which appeared in Operation Sea Lion I have disappeared. All is submerged in the melting pot of the leaden bath.

In Lacanian thinking, the untenable loss leaves only a trace behind, a trace which cannot recover to consciousness what is lost but becomes itself the object of scopophilial[78] attention.  Such attention seeks to avoid real knowledge in favour of libidinous gratification – the very thing Adorno would avoid.  Fully realised in the senses, Kiefer’s works have been described as just such objects.[79] However the whole field of art could be described (loosely) as scopophilial objects.  And could Kiefer’s works either aim or succeed in avoidance when their very existence would seem to make this a contradiction in terms? Rather, avoidance provides the springboard and the subject matter.

Amfortas and the Land

In contemplating Kiefer’s ravaged landscapes Fisher[80] reminds us of the German loss of land following each of theWorld Wars.  We would therefore expect an identity crisis pre-war as well as post war, attended by an obsession with paternalistic ancestry and with  (Lacanian) naming and classifying which is found in the Nazi ‘s compulsion to label and classify ethnic groups.[81]

With shrinking national boundaries each war was accompanied by its own exodus, in this case of Germans. While the most apparent allusions in The Red Sea clearly relate to Judaic legend and the genocide, beneath this is a layering of associations to ancient northern folklore.  The Wasteland is both literal and symbolic.  And this would have been in evidence both before the war as well as after it, given the psychological blow of loosing the war (as suggested in the Channel 4 documentary The War that made the Nazis)[82] as well as land. Fisher suggests the Germans wanted their old gods restored and were rejecting not only Judaism but also the usurping Judeo-based Christianity.  In place of the latter, Christ was to be seen in his role as the giver of the Grail, like the Sun god, restoring Amfortas and the land. An ancient split between the official religion and the ancient earth-mysticism finds its apocalyptic end via the age-old Judeo-Christian conflict – and despite the paradox that Christ was both Sun god and Jew.

The wounded Amfortas becomes the lost German gods and heroes – or even Hitler himself, whether as leader or dead ideal. By extension, the Germans too become Amfortas.

Such themes and wounds are also – for Lacanian reasons rather than Adorno’s – unrepresentable and thus lie dangerously hidden.

Cultural Alchemy

Truly post modern in its multiplicity of allusions and viewpoints[83] Kiefer’s work, as demonstrated above, is heavily loaded with alchemical reference points. We can read iconoclasm in this context as, itself, a stage in the alchemical process, for the dissolving (solutio or seperatio) of the nigredo phase must precede the purification in the albedo phase. By differentiating the various elements involved we can attempt to unravel the meaning.

In the alchemical relationship there occurs a coniunctio or unio mystica in which two chemical substances combine, altering both.[84]  In psychological terms, opposites in oneself collide, creating, initially, chaos.[85] Out of this primeval chaos spring signs of instincts or symbols of spiritual meaning (impossible to say which at this stage) projected outwards and having inductive power to constellate corresponding unconscious content in the projectee and thus forming an unconscious link (or mixtum compositorum).[86]

Perez-López Follows Jung’s thinking in interpreting the Jews as bearers of the German Shadow or unconscious twin Self in projection. This spotlights the tragedy of killing one’s brother – and one’s brother as oneself – accentuating the self-destructive element inherent in all murder.

From the death stages of the nigredo to the resurrection of the rubedo, the transformations indicated in alchemy are symbolic, that is, at the level of the psyche.  When the psyche is ignored instead of worked with, then literalisation – or acting out – occurs. Transformation of Self is replaced by projection and, here, eradication of others.  The blood of Christ then becomes the torn heart (or soul) in the leaden (bath as) coffin.

Receptacle of the Work

Kiefer’s works have not been well received in Germany where fears may be enhanced by concerns about their image abroad.[87] Having been condemned by critics as a Neo-Fascist[88] Kiefer is, not surprisingly, reclusive and avoids the media.; he has released only an elusive biography.[89] This contrasts sharply with the attention-seeking Brit pack  Kiefer stands to risk as much as gain through notoriety. In a rare film interview[90]he reveals that, for him, part of the work was to observe the media reaction.

However, the Jewish response has been different – and this is most significant in determining the acceptability and significance of the work. Many of his collectors are Jews in the U.S.A. Kiefer ventures to suggest they may be buying back a piece of lost heritage, that is, of Germany – their homeland too[91]. In 1990 Kiefer won Israel’s Wolf Foundation Prize.[92] With such seals of approval, greater acceptance has followed in Germany but, as pointed out in the Arena  film, his Retrospective of 1987-88 in the U.S. was still followed by queries as to the subject-matter as well as the importance of his work. Is this because the subject makes us all uncomfortable and we fidget beneath the cloud of collective guilt-by-association?  Who is it who would be the melancholic holocaust denier by erasing what we do not dare to remember?

Kiefer’s Voice - To  Speak or not to Speak

 So what does Kiefer himself say about his intentions? In a rare film [Arena 1991] he explains that he is neither fascist nor anti-fascist because to assert he is anti-fascist is to insult the real anti-fascists of the time. He was not there and the point is that therefore he cannot suggest what he would have done if he was. He does not feel excused of guilt simply because he was not there. He describes his work as for him an ‘exorcism’.  Apart from this he wants to ‘prevent oblivion’  and there is an element of warning here for he sees ‘the future growing from the seeds of the past’ (as in Grass will grow over your cities ….Fesaia 1996). This is understandable given the German reactions that followed the First World War[93]and the Versailles Peace Treaty, reactions like the evolution of the volkesgemeinschaft[94] and the cult of the soldier which laid the ground for the Second World War.

Kiefer stands firm against the attempts of critics to silence him, referring to the fascism of not allowing things to be spoken of – which is when they become dangerous.[95]  It may be relevant here to note the words of Roland Barthes  on the ‘tyranny of meaning’ in which he stresses the hazard of obligation to say things; this can only be avoided by unbalancing the meaning[96]. Kiefer’s works exemplify  this for they carry labyrinthine allusions and their full implications cannot readily be pinned down.

In line with Adorno, Kiefer says you cannot represent the tragedy of the Holocaust – but only show some of the remains.  Artists, he continues, reorganize remnants and history is a heap of ruins; the artist ‘liquefies the mud of history’ (reminiscent of the alchemical melting pot) to change - not history but - our ideology.  Nothung [1973] shows Siegfried’s sword left in an attic like a relic  - but if you forget these archetypes (remnants of ideology) what they stand for can recur.[97] Like Adorno, he advocates remembrance.

Indeed Kiefer’s works can be seen as remnants in themselves, reminders of the events of the war and of the history which preceded it, moulded on fragmented photographs, erased and burnt, they evoke the very idea of a ruin or relic. But unlike Lacanian trace objects they  remind rather than hide.  They provoke debate. Reactions which can only support Kiefer’s stated intention.  The apparent oscillation of meaning in his works makes us ask questions.  Thus they invite us as viewers to seek to be conscious too.

Burning Art

It is worth remembering that in his work Kiefer also tackles issues of art’s position  - and that art itself was a victim of, not just iconoclasm, but Nazism. The Hitlerian zeitgeist swallowed up artworks in a negative way, not only stealing 16,500 works but burning (Berlin1939) and deriding contemporary work ( climaxing in the famous Degenerate Art[98] exhibition of 1937 in Munich which showed the work alongside that of the mentally ill).

 In the Arena film, Kiefer talks about the ways in which the Nazis misused  poets and artists, committing crimes in the names of Goëthe and Schiller and exploiting Hölderlin’s poems about  a  utopian fatherland in Greece for ideological purposes.  On the other hand they disregarded the fact that  Jewish works are endemic to German culture, for instance the music of Heinrich Heiner.  

In Icarus – March Sand [1981] the artist is presented playing with fire.  In his painting, Kiefer metaphorically does this when he tackles explosive issues.  His task is a hazardous and (psychologically) heroic one, requiring a new kind of Siegfried. Of course Kiefer also literally uses fire as a ‘paintbrush’. Hitler too was a painter - and one who burned paintings (although not his own) – as well as an Icarus ( brought down by his flight of megalomania). In fact he was known as Der Mahler (The Painter).[99] This parallel suggests an allusion to some kind of  communion or participation mystique with Hitler.  Perhaps, as well as destroying to create, Kiefer is – consciously or unconsciously - examining the challenging question as to whether he is destructive like the Nazis – much as he examined himself in his Sieg Heil enactments.  Certainly the subject of art must be a fraught and traumatic one for the post war Germans.  No wonder Kiefer’s works look like charred remains and The Painter’s Studio [1981] is portrayed as on fire.

CONCLUSION

Researching and contemplating the manifold references in The Red Sea has enabled me to think through many otherwise untouched issues.  Uniting as many threads as it does and focusing on the heart of them, places it for me in a seminal position in Kiefer’s body of work, one deserving of greater consideration and having tremendous individual and collective significance.

We have seen that, apart from the genocide, The Red Sea has origins in Siegfried’s bath of blood and that this is a lower form of grail or communion cup – the blood of the slaughtered dragon offering physical invincibility. For the Germans, not only was Siegfried the archetypal role model but associations exist between Hitler and the quest for the Holy Grail. Furthermore, the bath is an alchemical vessel, notably here given the abundance of alchemical references in both  the work and its making. These references relate back to grail mythology - whether Christian or pagan in origin - and thus further substantiate such links within the painting. Meanwhile, the nature of the work, through its making and materials, render it incarnate in its physicality and presence, underscoring the notion of transubstantiation and making the work a kind of vessel in its own right.

At the same time, the various allusions  throughout tie in with the German psychic situation, from the psychological meaning of the dragon symbol (connecting to the pre-war patriarchy) to that of the geographical Red Sea (with its associations to post war culpability). Communion has been taken in bloodshed empowering only the hero’s empty destructive tendencies.  Unconscious evil has inverted the communion process into a metaphorical black mass.  The sea which opened the path to freedom for the Jews has become an exodus across the Styx, while the German as Charon has descended into Hades, the unconscious ‘nigrum, nigrius, nigro’[100] suggested in Kiefer’s burnt landscapes.

Yet beneath the horrors of the presenting wound to the Jews slumbers the wound to the Germans. It resides not only in obvious guilt,  but in lost land, identity and damaged self-esteem – the same wounds which ushered in the Nazis after World War One. If German mythology and the war have become taboo for the Germans, recognition of this idea certainly must be so. Yet observations of Kiefer’s other works support the notion of suffering to the Germans as an underlying subtext.  How far Kiefer intends this is impossible to determine. In the painting there are no figures; only the title guides us, leaving the bloody bath and its associations to otherwise speak for itself.

Kiefer’s intentions have been called into question. Various possibilities are  contained in the work: that he longs for his Germanic past; that the painting displays an inverted  communion; that he hopes for redemption. They are all potential facets to the situation.  It is as if in the face of the overwhelming Kiefer casts his net on the waters and leaves his audience to judge. Indeed he neither assumes nor denies guilt; he leaves it open and has declared that the reaction of the viewer is part of the work.  One thing is clear, his aim is to prevent oblivion; thus any redemption depends on awareness rather than on ‘blotting out’.

Since the individual psyche is embedded in the collective psyche  (of which it is a microcosm) we might expect to see not only the presence of the collective shadow but intimations of Kiefer’s individual unconscious shadow – lured towards German romanticism with its inherent dangers – because he is, like all of us simply human. The dark communion is the flip side of the hope for greater consciousness. The one can only occur if the former is made conscious. Thus the surfacing of negative elements is essential for the truth to become visible. Like the alchemical symbols of  Mercurius, the dragon and even Christ, the psychic situation is dualistic - and must be so to be complete.

The ultimate judge of  Kiefer’s works can only be the Jewish audience. Whatever threads are involved, if the main thrust was not towards a conscious recognition of the German-Jewish situation – and a full and unbiased recognition, with all its intrinsic darkness – and aimed at constructive resolution,  it is certain the Jewish audience would shudder instinctively.  Their acceptance and commendation is the sole and definitive seal of authenticity.

Finally, in fusing Jewish and German history The Red Sea not only portrays but potentially becomes an alchemical vessel in its own right, uniting them in the hearts and minds of the Nachgeboren. And as the consciousness of the viewer interacts with the work, imbuing it with meaning equally as it is enlightened by it, The Red Sea becomes the container for this psychological communion or mixtum compositorum through which transformation can occur. Embedded in the alchemical process is the dictum:

‘In stercore invenitur’[101]

Truth, goodness and beauty - the treasure or gold  - are hidden in dirt[102] (or in folklore, in the keeping of the dragon). The darkness  of the work recalls this possibility. In his more recent works Kiefer went on to more clearly express a positive note for the future, representing his body as mediating the terrestrial and the celestial [Star Picture 1996 for instance].[103]

Questions hang in the balance.  More German land was lost with the Second World War. Damaged self-esteem has led to avoidance.  How does it, still less the Jewish psyche, repair itself? 50 years on are we any closer to rapprochement?  Or is the bath of blood still the gaping wound between two cultures while the real dragon within lies slumbering as it did after the First World War?

Jung stressed the need for psychic development which requires both heart and the will to awareness - otherwise projection and  its evil concomitants  reign.[104]  In a world torn by ethnic conflict this is an issue relevant to the whole of humanity. Certainly it is only by consciousness of the issues involved that the bloody tomb can become a womb of life-giving placenta. And The Red Sea, like Lady Macbeth’s hands, serves as a reminder of what cannot be washed away.

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