Bohemia by the Sea, by the German Neo-Expressionist artist Anselm Kiefer is a large scale landscape painting with a highly textured impasto surface. The painting is made up of two panels of equal size that are joined together to make one huge country field full of pink-orange poppies. The horizon line is extremely high, and on the right panel just above the horizon line the artist has inscribed in white paint the words Böhmen liegt am Meer (Bohemia Lies by the Sea). At the center of the composition is a country road that begins to curve just before it hits the horizon line. The road is divided by a thick line of grass and poppy flowers. The colors are muted and muddy, except for two poppies on the left hand side of the left panel that are a bright red.
The large scale and tactile surface of the painting transports the viewer into Kiefer's dark expansive landscape. The centering of the road forces the viewer to place himself or herself directly in front of the road, and by beginning the road outside of the composition the viewer is further transported into the painting reflecting on the road that lies ahead. The muddy brown, green, and black paint dotted with the muted pink-orange poppy flowers evoke a mood of melancholy. The dark blue paint of the sky dripping over the field further adds to the overall gloominess of the composition. The two red poppy flowers on the left panel awaken memories of the lives lost during war. Since World War I red poppies have come to symbolize spilt blood on the battle field.
Anselm Kiefer has taken the title of his painting from the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann's poem, by the same title, Bohemia Lies by the Sea. Kiefer's work, like Bachmann's, deals with post-World War II Germany through the themes of mourning, reflection, and remembrance. Bachmann's poem explores the fallacy behind the belief in a Utopian society. Like the idea of political and social perfection can never exist, Bohemia will never lie by the sea as it is landlocked.
Below is a copy of the poem:
Bohemia Lies by the Sea
If houses here are green, I'll step inside a house.
If bridges here are sound, I'll walk on solid ground.
If love's labour's lost in every age, I'll gladly lose it here.
If it's not me, it's one who is as good as me.
If a word here borders on me, I'll let it border.
If Bohemia still lies by the sea, I'll believe in the sea again.
And believing in the sea, thus I can hope for land.
If it's me, then it's anyone, for he's as worthy as me.
I want nothing more for myself. I want to go under.
Under – that means the sea, there I'll find Bohemia again.
From my grave, I wake in peace.
From deep down I know now, and I'm not lost.
Come here, all you Bohemians, seafarers, dock whores, and ships
unanchored. Don't you want to be Bohemians, all you Illyrians,
Veronese and Venetians. Play the comedies that make us laugh
until we cry. And err a hundred times,
as I erred and never withstood the trials,
though I did withstand them time after time.
As Bohemia withstood them and one fine day
was released to the sea and now lies by water.
I still border on a word and on another land,
I border, like little else, on everything more and more,
a Bohemian, a wandering minstrel, who has nothing, who
is held by nothing, gifted only at seeing, by a doubtful sea,
the land of my choice.
Ingeborg Bachmann
From Darkness Spoken: Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Peter Filkins, copyright © 2006 Zephyr Press
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