The art of lament
The past few years I've worked at the St. Louis Art Museum in various roles. Each day I am surrounded by art of all genres and periods, a privilege I savor. Each morning I arrive early just so I have time to walk through the quiet galleries, making note of art rotation, especially pieces I've not seen before.
Recently I noticed this bronze sculpture by the modern German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), the first female member and titled professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Created between 1938-1941 and entitled Lamentation, the piece captures a woman with lowered eyes and covered mouth, a look of intense and silent grief on her face. The work is her response to the death of a close friend, Ernst Barlach (1879-1838) who had suffered persecution at the hands of the Nazis. Kollwitz also faced persecution and censorship by the Nazis who forced her to resign her teaching position in the Academy in 1933.
The figure in the sculpture is believed to be Kollwitz herself, who was known for her empathetic depictions of tragedy and hardship. Kollwitz focused on themes close to the heart of the people of her native Germany such as the worker’s movement and the suffering caused by death and war, portraying these themes most often from the woman’s perspective.
Suffering, death, and lamentation were not foreign to Kollwitz personally. Her son Peter was killed in Belgium during World War I, leading her to take up the pacifist cause for the rest of her life. Near the end of World War II, her grandson, also named Peter, died on the battlefield. Filled with despair she begged her remaining son, Hans, for permission to commit suicide, which he did not give. She died in 1945 of heart failure at age 78.
I first encountered Kollwitz's work while researching for a paper on the art of lament. I've always believed that art could help us process and express suffering. Time spent in the presence of evocative pieces such as Lamentation puts labels on grief we cannot process on our own. Who of us has not covered our face in an attempt to hold sorrow so deep as to tear us apart?
Regarding her artistic process Kollwitz wrote, “In my own work I find that I must try to keep everything to a more and more abbreviated form. The execution seems to be too complete. I should like to do... etching so that all the essentials are strongly stressed and the inessentials almost omitted.”
I appreciate more and more how art calls us to slow down, to wait, to sit still. Works by artists such as Kollwitz ask us to sit in what could be an uncomfortable place, an awkward place. It reminds us we are human - "dust to dust." It reminds us that grief must be expressed, processed, and released if it is ever to find a resting place. I intend to do just that in the coming weeks and months, or as long as this piece is on display. Talk to me, Käthe. Remind me that I am dust, and I will one day return there. Teach me to know my own grief that I may know the grief of others, and therein find healing.