This almost-twelve-foot-tall work is the fourth huge composite woodcut by Anselm Kiefer to enter the Museum's collection. Like the others, the subjects of which include Wagnerian opera, German literary and military heroes, and the architecture of the Third Reich, it is composed of numerous individually printed sheets mounted together on backing to form one image. It thus evokes German tradition, notably Albrecht Dürer's immense sectionally printed woodcut of 1515–17, The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I. The foreground shows the artist lying half-clothed in a shallow pool, in a posture resembling the yogic "corpse" position. Gigantic sunflowers grow from his loins in a manner reminiscent of a small watercolor by Kiefer also in the Museum's collection, Man Lying with Branch (1971; acc. no. L1995.12.1). Kiefer has called attention to the repetitive nature of the woodcut medium by repeating images of his head and feet at the top and bottom of his body, suggesting also that he is having an out-of-body experience. Characteristically for Kiefer, the flowers have an oxymoronic quality, for although they are unmistakably sunflowers, they are entirely black. Kiefer enhanced the image with reflective touches of shellac and washes of pale blue acrylic.