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Artillerymen in the Shower
- Syracuse University Press
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66 Artillerymen in the Shower Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 19151 I did not want to go there. I do not want to be here. Fourteen pallid young men, nude, flank a tall round stove that heats water for the shower. Their captain, poised in a uniform stands in tall boots, observes from canvas right. The artillerymen receive frail water. They seem to console each other. Furnace opens its jaws to dampness, to tears buried in throats, to wails in the mind that cannot move past eyelids and slumping or huddled figures recoiling from warm water they confront like their own tears dropping from shower heads, poised in a row of gallows above them. The artillerymen have red hands (dipped in blood of the dying?) and red feet (steeped in blood of the dead?). This painting groans. 1. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Retrospective Exhibition, May 2003, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., painting on loan from the Guggenheim Museum, New York City. 67 Nazis shouted, “Degenerate Art!” Killed your six hundred thirty-nine works. You killed yourself. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: You bled the war you could not bear, the broken stumbling through slush bodies. You simplify: One must refuse. One must refuse. I did not want to go there. I do not want to be here. “If need be, I shall sacrifice my life for art.” ...