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How it hurts me so much!
My heart is pounding in my body
and I have no peace;
for I hear the sound of the trumpet,
the noise of the battle;
Jeremiah 4:19
(Luther Bible, revised version 1984)
In the picture, as the result of the painting process, we see from the uppermost colour layer through to the paper as the picture carrier, but in a metaphorical sense from the broken darkness in the lower layers up to the uppermost layers, above which only brightness and luminosity prevail.
(…)
A key feature is the relationship between compression and dissolution, between darkening and brightening, which – depending on how you read the picture – takes effect from top to bottom or from bottom to top. You hardly notice that you are no longer just looking from the outside, but that you are already in the middle of the picture and experiencing it for yourself as you climb through its structure. Awake, we perceive the dense structures as a kind of latticework, we associate them with entanglement, we think of a thicket and its penetration, we believe we sense a threat in the black colours and relief in the yellow ones, we may also think of blazing fire and broken Stars of David and we sense the dangers in a labyrinth. Of course, the picture is not a programme painting or a literal illustration, it is an autonomous work of art that was created in an obviously vehement painting process based on the words of the prophet Jeremiah.
(…)
Perhaps nothing else testifies to hope as much as the metaphor of the victorious light, which penetrates again and again even in the turmoil, problems and fears of everyday life. It summarises the call to affirm life as well as the wish that it will shine for us in eternity. In the context of the Bible, an image like this can – in the truest sense of the word – illuminate this message for us in an emphatic and unobtrusive way .
Text by Frank Günter Zehnder
Prof. Dr. Frank Günter Zehnder, *1938 in Wuppertal-Barmen. 1973-96 worked at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne; lastly Head of the Medieval Department and Managing Director of the Friends’ Association, from 1991 Honorary Professor of Art History and Museology at the University of Bonn, 1996 appointed Director of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. Retired since 2005.
Text excerpt from: Frank Günter Zehnder, Lebensbejahung inmitten der Gefahr, in: Norbert Lammert (Hg.), So sehe ich die Bibel. Persönliche Einblicke in das Buch der Bücher, mit Aquarellen von Andreas Felger, Gnadenthal 2008, S. 55–57.