You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It has long been observed that trauma and loss are potent impetuses to the making of art (Klein, 1929; Laub & Modell, 1995; Tutter & Wurmser, 2015). In particular, considerations of the visual art of Holocaust survivors are at the heart of current psychoanalytic theorizing around the uses of creativity in response to devastating trauma: from the simple expression and communication, via visual representation, of that which cannot be otherwise articulated, thought about, or symbolized, to the reparation or even mastery of such experiences though aesthetic transformation (Ornstein, 2006, 2015; Dreifuss-Kattan, 2016). Thanks to Dawn Skorczewski and Karen Maandag-Ralph (2020), who recognized the significance of the art of the Holocaust survivor Sieg Maandag (1937-2013), this oeuvre, singular in its magnitude and variety, now constitutes an important addition to the psychoanalytic discourse around the art of trauma. I am privileged to contribute the present effort to this special issue of American Imago devoted to Maandag's life and work.1
The spoken and written testimonies that Maandag left behind have allowed Skorczewski (2020) to compellingly locate in certain thematic and formal aspects of his creative products the representation of aspects of the depraved cruelty, violence, and death that he witnessed and endured as a small child in the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, including overt depictions of visceral horror and hopeless despair. Equally important, his corpus speaks to the long-term psychological sequelae of this massive trauma. Finally, it also affords signs of the transformative hope and generativity that surely contributed to Maandag's ability to sustain enduring, nurturing adult relationships—let alone to his capacity to survive as a human being.
Here, I will enumerate and underline the cumulative traumatic losses that mark Maandag's wartime and post-wartime life,
and argue that they factor significantly among those traumas that could not sustain art