Siegfried's Difficult Way to Brünnhilde
Anselm Kiefer German
Not on view
The title of this work refers to the hero of Wagner’s Ring cycle, Siegfried, and his journey to the place where his lover, Brünnhilde, sleeps inside a ring of fire. It is also the title of a 1977 book of photographs Kiefer made on the subject of an abandoned railway bed, a motif that suggests a sense of loss, of forgotten time. "Our historical knowledge . . . determines our way of looking at things," Kiefer once said. "We see railway tracks anywhere and think about Auschwitz. It will remain that way in the long run."