A Visit to the AGO
This is not a religious post, just my impressions from the Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday) Exhibit by Anselm Kiefer at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The exhibit ran from March 4 to August 1, 2010. I went to see it twice, first with a friend and second with a group from Trinity St. Paul's United Church, where I worship. If you're curious about the significance of Palm Sunday to the church, click on the Palm Sunday link for more information.
I have since taken one Art History course, but I still do not know a lot about art. What I do know is what I like. The first time I went to see the exhibit, my impression was simple: I liked it, and it was beautiful. There was a mixture of earth tones that caught my eye. Cracked clay, broken ladders, clothing falling and so much more. I asked my friend what the ladder meant. She explained that in California they have huge palm trees that grow dates, and pickers climb the rungs to harvest them. I thought that sounded plausible.
I decided this would make a great post for Good Friday, so I went back with the group from church. Artist Patty Zuver and former minister Hans Van Nie were there to walk us through the deeper meaning of the work. Sometimes ignorance is truly bliss. By the end of the presentation, I felt a heaviness settle in. I was extremely emotional. But on my walk home, I put things into perspective and found some powerful lessons worth sharing.
Who is Anselm Kiefer?
Anselm Kiefer is a German artist born at the end of World War II. He works with natural materials and is obsessed with what can rise from devastation, the beauty within destruction, which many find morbid. For the Palmsonntag exhibit, there is a palm tree made from resin that looks strikingly real, uprooted and fallen. Several installations mounted on the wall each represent a page from a book. They include cracked clay, broken ladders, the lamps of the five virgins who were wise enough to keep their lamps filled with oil, chastity belts, roses, thorns, blood, and more. Kiefer loved books because they contained knowledge.
The Deeper Meaning of the Exhibit
What does all of this mean? The palm tree is a symbol of life because it regenerates, but the fallen tree represents the fallenness of humanity. The ladder is Jacob's ladder, representing the connection between heaven and earth, except the ladders are broken, making heaven inaccessible. The five virgins wait patiently for a bridegroom who may never come. People pray to Mary, but will she intervene? And yet plants begin to rise. That rising gives us hope and points to new possibilities.
Five Lessons from the Palmsonntag Exhibit
The exhibit expresses the human condition, and it is meant to teach us that life springs from destruction. So what can we learn from all this?
- If we fall down 10 times, we get up 11. Resilience is not about avoiding the fall. It is about getting up, learning the lessons, and moving forward.
- Instead of waiting for someone to rescue us, we should rescue ourselves. Take a chance on that idea you have been sitting on. If you fail, like Thomas Edison, you simply know that approach does not work, so you try another way.
- Life is broken, but that does not mean we are broken. There is a difference between a difficult season and a damaged identity.
- Our lives can be cracked and thorny, but the good thing is we get to reinvent ourselves. The crack is not the end of the story. It is often where the light gets in.
- Good often comes out of adversity, so seek the opportunities and the accompanying lessons. The same fire that destroys also forges something stronger.
Being Wrong is Part of the Journey
I have oversimplified the exhibit, but I wanted to show some points. Did you notice how far off our interpretation of the broken ladders was? But the potent lesson is that we tried to figure it out. Being wrong and failing are part of the human condition, and we get to learn from them. What areas of your life aren't you trying? I still feel a heaviness from all the dark imagery, but I am open to other points of view. What are your thoughts?
Join the Applied Knowledge Is Power workshop and learn how to extract insights faster, think more clearly, and turn what you read into real-world results.
Register here: https://theinvisiblementor.com/product/applied-knowledge-is-power-i-help-you-get-more-knowledge-faster-through-strategic-reading/
This post contains affiliate links, and The Invisible Mentor® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details, see here. Thank you so much for your support!
