The epic narrative of Wagner’s Ring cycle follows the strife and conflict of the Gods, Heroes and mythological creatures over the desire to possess the magic ring that will grant domination over the world. The last movement of the Opera , The Gotterdammerung, and incidentally the name given to the last few days in Hitler’s bunker, has a suitable cataclysmic and apocalyptic finale. The surface imagery of the sculpture combines Durer’s “Battle of The Angels” with the illustration of The Ride of The Valkyries by Arthur Rackham.
Below this is a dissected print of the sculpture of “Dresden 1945” that I created in 2012. This sculpture was created from a burnt music score of Wagner’s Ring cycle.
Dresden was completely destroyed by fire on the night of February 13th 1945, the entire city was effectively incinerated. Richard Wagner was resident in Dresden during the 1840s and became involved in the revolutionary action which culminated in the revolution of 1849. Wagner was eventually forced to become exiled in Switzerland where he finished the Nibelungen. whilst in Dresden he wrote passionate articles in the Volksblatter urging people to revolt. He took an active part in the fighting and was a lookout at the top of the Frauenkirche. During this time he became close friends with anarchist and revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin. Mikhail Bakunin was a major influence upon Wagner at the time of the writing of the Ring of the Nibelungen, as were the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach. Bakunin frequently talked of the desire to burn Paris to the ground to purify society through the purification of fire, something that became a central element in the Ring cycle. Of course, ironically, the city he conceived the great work in, was itself totally consumed by fire. Fortunately for Wagner and Bakunin they were not alive to witness the horrors that ideaology bought to the 20th Century.
The sculpture of Dresden uses the music score of Richard Wagner’s ring, itself born out of revolution and influenced by ideological and destructive fantasies. An artist whose work came to be used by the Nazis for the glorification of the German myth.
