The Transformation of Aesthetic Precedent in the Art of Sieg Maandag

Abstract:The oeuvre of the Dutch artist and Holocaust victim Sieg Maandag constitutes an important addition to the psychoanalytic discourse around the art of trauma. The author enumerates and underlines the cumulative traumatic losses that mark Maandag's experience as a child in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp, including the loss of much of his family, and argues that these losses factor significantly among those traumas that could not sustain articulation, but pressed for figurative and symbolic expression and representation in visual art. The author identifies art-historical references that Maandag adapted, including works of his prominent aesthetic influences, Giorgio De Chirico, Jean Dubuffet, Edvard Munch and Francis Bacon. The subsequent revision and synthesis of these references marks them as part of a transformative attempt at mastery over trauma, including shattering loss.