polity west germanyconcept:era contemporary
Shulamite
Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and straw on canvas (1983) by Anselm Kiefer. Depicts the interior of a massive, empty, arch-vaulted room or crypt, painted in dark, scorched tones, based on a 1939 photograph of Wilhelm Kreis's 'Memorial Hall' (a Nazi monument). The image of Shulamith — from Paul Celan's 'Death Fugue' — becomes the interior of a destruction: not golden hair but ashen void.
Scholarly Significance
Kiefer's Shulamite (1983) pairs with Margarethe as the Jewish counterpart in his Celan response series — depicting a scorched, windowless crypt as the image of annihilation.
Notes
- ·Based on a 1939 photograph of Wilhelm Kreis's Funeral Hall (Ehrenhalle) — a Nazi monument — which Kiefer sourced and used as a photographic underpainting.
- ·The lower edge of the canvas is scored with fire; the entire surface is dark, scorched, with only small flames visible at the base of the arched space.
- ·The title 'Shulamith/Sulamith' refers to the dark-haired Jewish woman of Celan's poem and of the Song of Solomon.
- ·The pair Margarethe/Shulamite is Kiefer's most direct confrontation with the Holocaust: one work is golden, pastoral, harvest-rich; the other is scorched, funerary, annihilated.
- ·The Kreis 'Funeral Hall' was never built; but Kiefer used it as a photographic starting point, charging the image with historical guilt.
- ·The work entered the Saatchi Collection in the 1980s and became widely known through the Saatchi 'New Art' exhibitions.
- ·Kiefer's Shulamite is one of the most analytically discussed artworks in postwar German art criticism.