Women of antiquity (Anselm Kiefer)
July 20th 2007 01:17
On display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
From the series "Women of antiquity" (2002).
"Another of [Anselm Kiefer's] recurring interests has been the unfair treatment many mythologies have handed out to women, particularly strong women whose intellectual questioning has been seen as unruly and cause for demonisation: for example Pandora and Lilith. In Women of antiquity, Kiefer uses attributes to identify individual characters from history: a lead book in place of her head identifies Myrtis, a Greek poet blamed for competing with Pindar; a glass Melancholia cube represents Hypatia, an Alexandrine philosopher who was brutally murdered in sectarian unrest in 415 CE; and a rusting mass of razor wire signifies Candidia, a Roman witch who wove vipers through her dishevelled hair." -- Art gallery website
"Each attribute signifies some aspect of the story associated with the woman in question but they are also recurring themes in Kiefer's art. He has been making lead books since the early 1970s and sees these as batteries that store history and knowledge. Being lead, they may offer protection from decay and even nuclear radiation, but lead also has associations with entombment. The Melancholia cube is a cube with the corners cut off and is thus seen as incomplete, like human understanding. Here it specifically references Dürer's great etching Melancholia that illustrates how, in the Renaissance, creativity was associated with melancholic states. Candidia's razor wire has all the usual connotations but this is a rusted and dysfunctional trace of exclusion. It also becomes associated with another of Kiefer's favourite materials: great tangles of thorns, also rich in mythological and religious associations, which he collected in Morocco."
Hypatia
Candida
Myrtis
From the series "Women of antiquity" (2002).
Beautiful, but depersonalized. Turned to stone, and reduced to essence.
"Another of [Anselm Kiefer's] recurring interests has been the unfair treatment many mythologies have handed out to women, particularly strong women whose intellectual questioning has been seen as unruly and cause for demonisation: for example Pandora and Lilith. In Women of antiquity, Kiefer uses attributes to identify individual characters from history: a lead book in place of her head identifies Myrtis, a Greek poet blamed for competing with Pindar; a glass Melancholia cube represents Hypatia, an Alexandrine philosopher who was brutally murdered in sectarian unrest in 415 CE; and a rusting mass of razor wire signifies Candidia, a Roman witch who wove vipers through her dishevelled hair." -- Art gallery website
I imagine they'd look very different in different lights, in different settings.
"Each attribute signifies some aspect of the story associated with the woman in question but they are also recurring themes in Kiefer's art. He has been making lead books since the early 1970s and sees these as batteries that store history and knowledge. Being lead, they may offer protection from decay and even nuclear radiation, but lead also has associations with entombment. The Melancholia cube is a cube with the corners cut off and is thus seen as incomplete, like human understanding. Here it specifically references Dürer's great etching Melancholia that illustrates how, in the Renaissance, creativity was associated with melancholic states. Candidia's razor wire has all the usual connotations but this is a rusted and dysfunctional trace of exclusion. It also becomes associated with another of Kiefer's favourite materials: great tangles of thorns, also rich in mythological and religious associations, which he collected in Morocco."
Hypatia
Amputated arms.
I like the way the light fills the cube, and I like the dirtiness -- the rust on the iron, the ash in the glass.
Candida
The dresses are made of bronze, though they have the fragile look of plaster.
I didn't properly catch: (1) the dirty feel of the rust; (2) the sharpness of the razors; (3) the ooziness of the blood-like sap.
Myrtis
Like wings, or like neck ruffs. Myrtis looks more beheaded than the others.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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Comment by Damo
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Is it how women see themselves or how men see women?
Comment by Miswanderlust
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hmmmm depersonalized headless women....
Candida: the asexual fungus? That also makes sense in a perverse way
I get the Myrtis and Hypatia references.....
Comment by Adrian
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Damo, that's a tough question -- multiple interpretations of art, etc, don't you know. For instance, the dresses simultaneously celebrate a certain sort of feminine beauty, and question it. But the artist is male. So maybe it's intended to be how a male sees how women see how men see women.
Dear Ms W -- Thanks for the thought! It also strikes me, though, that Candida might be the most sexual of the three, and that her locks are pubic.
I knew of Hypatia (there's an academic journal named after her, for instance; and her death is one of the most striking in philosophy -- most of the time philosophers die in their beds). Didn't know of the others, and tried to dig up more info (poked around online, checked my Oxford Classical Dictionary, etc), but I get the impression that what's known about them really is very sketchy. In particular, couldn't find much about Candida, but I have a distant memory that she's mentioned in a Horace poem.
I suppose there's a question as to why Anselm picked lesser known figures, and selected these three in particular.
Comment by Miswanderlust
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I agree about the sexual nature of the candida piece. Thanks again for the interesting post and comments.
Mis
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