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Lot Essay
"As above so below" is the famous axiom of the supposed father of the "hermetic" arts, Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes, Thrice-greatest) and expresses the belief in the commonality and indivisible union of the macrocosm and the microcosm. It is a simple assumption that runs through many of the world's great religions and is the root of all gnosticism and mystical art and belief. The seminal sixteenth and seventeenth century mystical philosopher Robert Fludd, expressed this same idea in different terms when he declared that "every plant, everything on earth, has its equivalent star in heaven."
In 1996, Anselm Kiefer took Fludd's statement as the root source of a series of Star paintings in which he sought to visually demonstrate this idea as if it were the spectacular and elaborate product of some celestial archiving system. For Kiefer, as it was for his artistic mentor and predecessor Joseph Beuys, art is a mystical practice through which the holistic nature of the universe reveals itself. The sixteenth century Spanish poet Francesco de Ouevedo y Villegas believed that through the work of art, a man is able to hold the entire universe in the palm of his hand. A sonnet of his described this principle when he declared "I hold all Indias in my Hand". This phrase Kiefer also took as the source for the series of paintings of 1995 to 1996 that directly precedes this 1996 painting Das Haus.
Throughout this period Kiefer seems to have identified himself closely with the figures of both Fludd and Ouevedo y Villegas, often depicting a syncretised figure of himself alongside the caption 'Kiefer-Fludd-Quevedo". Das Haus belongs to a series of figureless paintings that depict modern terrestrial landscapes set against the star-filled night sky and overladen with Fludd's cosmic maps of microcosm and the macrocosm.
One of the early champions of Rosicrucianism, Fludd was a Renaissance man who attempted to merge gnostic belief, Christianity, the Kabbalah and the discoveries of modern science into a cohesive picture of the universe. His syncretic approach evidently appealed to Kiefer whose art is itself often a product of a similar approach.
In Das Haus Kiefer depicts an ominous and official-looking building with two search lights projecting into the sky. In their light the Kabbalistic diagram of the sephiroth is written and around it Fludd's Philosophia Moysaica is inscribed into the picture surface with Fludd credited to the left. This strange and heavy fusion of medieval pseudo-science, ancient mysticism and the banal, impersonal and oppressive architecture of man's modern urban environment not only suggests a continuous mythical history pervading the present but also the clear and not necessarily welcome division that mankind has made between heaven and hell.
In 1996, Anselm Kiefer took Fludd's statement as the root source of a series of Star paintings in which he sought to visually demonstrate this idea as if it were the spectacular and elaborate product of some celestial archiving system. For Kiefer, as it was for his artistic mentor and predecessor Joseph Beuys, art is a mystical practice through which the holistic nature of the universe reveals itself. The sixteenth century Spanish poet Francesco de Ouevedo y Villegas believed that through the work of art, a man is able to hold the entire universe in the palm of his hand. A sonnet of his described this principle when he declared "I hold all Indias in my Hand". This phrase Kiefer also took as the source for the series of paintings of 1995 to 1996 that directly precedes this 1996 painting Das Haus.
Throughout this period Kiefer seems to have identified himself closely with the figures of both Fludd and Ouevedo y Villegas, often depicting a syncretised figure of himself alongside the caption 'Kiefer-Fludd-Quevedo". Das Haus belongs to a series of figureless paintings that depict modern terrestrial landscapes set against the star-filled night sky and overladen with Fludd's cosmic maps of microcosm and the macrocosm.
One of the early champions of Rosicrucianism, Fludd was a Renaissance man who attempted to merge gnostic belief, Christianity, the Kabbalah and the discoveries of modern science into a cohesive picture of the universe. His syncretic approach evidently appealed to Kiefer whose art is itself often a product of a similar approach.
In Das Haus Kiefer depicts an ominous and official-looking building with two search lights projecting into the sky. In their light the Kabbalistic diagram of the sephiroth is written and around it Fludd's Philosophia Moysaica is inscribed into the picture surface with Fludd credited to the left. This strange and heavy fusion of medieval pseudo-science, ancient mysticism and the banal, impersonal and oppressive architecture of man's modern urban environment not only suggests a continuous mythical history pervading the present but also the clear and not necessarily welcome division that mankind has made between heaven and hell.