(born in Donaueschingen in 1945)
“Johannis-Logen”, titled, mixed media (gouache, watercolour, charcoal), photograph, collage on strong paper, the paper partially originally torned, folded, 102 x 113 cm, framed, (PS)

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Even in his early work, Anselm Kiefer already engages with the symbols, motifs and themes of the German cultural and political tradition, which among other things contributed to the rise of National Socialism. In his view, a visual confrontation with German history has a collective therapeutic and healing effect for the German people.

‘St John‘s Lodge’ is the name given to freemasons´ lodges which provide instruction in the three degrees of freemasonry – apprentice, fellowcraft and master mason.
The patron saint of these lodges is John the Baptist, and their feast day is St John´s Day, which is also the highest holiday for St John´s lodges. Kiefer encloses his various staircase systems with mirror-image duplications of the symbols of freemasonry – square and compasses – and simultaneously connects them with one another. On the arms, or at the tips, of the squares and compasses Kiefer has written down the names of various lodges and masonic umbrella organisations.
The staircases, which in their original masonic context rise upwards to symbolise the different hierarchies, are arranged in a straight line in Kiefer´s work, but with a downward tendency, while the numerical series increases from outside to inside. The procedures employed in this work can be seen as a synonym for Kiefer´s activities. He consciously plays on various iconographies, and always manipulates them. His St John´s Lodges once again reveal the special character of Kiefer´s work: the more familiar you become with them, and the better you seem to recognise yourself in them, the more the feeling arises that you have lost your way in the labyrinth of Kiefer´s symbolism. The labyrinth increasingly becomes more extensive and many-layered, and its unity and overall connectedness can only be compared with the uncertainty with which the observer seeking to confront it attempts to master it.