Regine Kemmerich-Lortzing
Herta Seibt de Zinser and Immanuel Kant                                                
Badenweiler, June 2024


What do the sculptures by sculptor Herta Seibt de Zinser in this park have to do with the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant? I would like to take you on a little journey of discovery. Don’t worry, I’m not going to torture you with Kant’s complicated philosophy. But to make my thoughts plausible to you, I need to explain Kant’s theory a little – but very succinctly and in my own words, I promise!

New books, podcasts and lectures on the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth can be found everywhere. Just recently, Professor Birgit Recki from Hamburg explained at the University of Freiburg that modern aesthetics began with Kant. The fact that Kant developed a theory of aesthetics, a theory of art, is particularly surprising because in fact he didn’t seem to be interested in art at all. He exclusively focused on his ability to think rigorously.

Who hasn’t heard Kant’s famous sentence: “Have the courage to use your own reason.” His conclusion, so to speak, from his first work “Critique of Pure Reason”. Or the other sentence: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” His conclusion, so to speak, from the subsequent work “Critique of Practical Reason”.

For Kant, the only moral authority was reason striving for rules. He thus postulated a freedom of thought with which he even shook the foundation of theology at the time, because – can God be ‘reasonably’ proven? But there is also the famous quote: “The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” And that’s what we want to look at.

While contemplating the night sky, Kant discovers that a gap opened in his mental construct: how can this pleasant feeling when contemplating the sky at night be created by thinking alone – i.e. without the religious belief in heavenly providence, divine consolation, etc.? – How can this pleasant feeling in the vision of a nocturnal heaven be brought together with reason which strives for rules?

Since we humans, as natural organisms, have been endowed by nature itself with this ability to reason, he explains in his “Critique of Judgement”, a sensually pleasant contemplation of the sublime logically also serves the progress of human history and thus the ideal state that we are striving for.

And where do the sensually pleasing perception of beauty in nature and the intellectually organizing power of understanding and reason meet? – In art! – Art is the place where the interweaving of emotion and reason takes place. Looking at beautiful things, sensual perception is completely purposeless, follows no intention; it is a pleasurable sensation triggered by beautiful forms. This promptly challenges the mind, which is constantly searching for explanations and the arranging of principles. The human being can’t help it! The mind reacts and begins to work. Art is created from the mental transformation of what we experience! However, there is no predetermined set of rules for the creator of art. Everyone sets their own standards. This is where the freedom of art is revealed!

 The person who looks at the art created in this way is free to decide whether or not they like what they see. He does ask himself whether he can ‘reasonably’ classify what he sees. If not, he seeks advice. But when making his decision, he does not make a judgement in the conventional sense. He bases his decision on his individual preference, his taste. And, as we all know, there’s no accounting for taste…

At first glance, Herta’s sculptures correspond exactly to Kant’s train of thought. Herta loves nature in all its many forms and has done so since she was a child. She captures the countless forms in her observations almost daily in sketches, whether in pencil or, more recently, in an antiquated but very elaborate technique with a silver pencil, for which she must prime the paper beforehand. This is documented in an endless abundance of such drawings. In the Kantian sense, she experiences the beautiful and sublime in nature through sensory perception. Her mind begins to transform, to abstract, in order to give all this a new form of expression in large-format sculptures. So far, so good.

But it is precisely in her sculptures that the difference to Kant’s theory of aesthetics becomes apparent. Her sculptures all look light and airy and aesthetically fit into nature as if by themselves. But they are not the result of a mental transformation at a desk or on a walk. Herta requires an enormous amount of energy for each individual sculpture. She heats each individual tube with a welding torch and bends the hot rods by hand using all kinds of tools, just like those used in a forge. She repeats this several times. She does hard physical labour, especially when developing large sculptures. And she can only develop the shape of the sculpture during the working process, depending on how the material reacts, which in turn depends on various factors. When she starts, she doesn’t yet know what the sculpture will look like in detail at the end.

Why does Herta Seibt de Zinser do this? Why does a woman who feels such an intense connection to nature burden herself with such strenuous work? Why doesn’t she stick to drawing or painting, which requires far less physical effort?

This has to do with the way she perceives things. Artistically inclined beings have – let me put it this way – a somewhat particularly structured way of perceiving things: very sensitive, very intense, very detailed, very differentiated.

Herta not only perceives the beautiful forms in nature. She was born and grew up in Peru, a continent of ancient indigenous cultures that have disappeared but remain present in our consciousness. It is not surprising that Herta’s antennae are connected to nature in such a way that they also perceive the enormous power that resides within her. She physically senses this natural force within nature, which can quietly lead to magnificent blossoming and growth, but can also violently destroy. A force that can slowly but steadily overgrow entire pyramids and cities, allowing us to marvel at them later as archaeological excavations. A driving force that is stronger than us humans and that calls on us to be humble.

For Herta, it is not about a cozy feeling of well-being in an intersection of emotion and intellect in the brain. She experiences marvelous forms in her encounter with nature. She experiences her entire work as a single “homage to nature”. The titles of her series already express her concern: SEMILLA, HOJA, FLOR, FRUTO etc. They are abstractions of all the forms that Herta encounters in nature.

But she also recognizes the powerful and sweaty driving force, because nature always makes its way, it cannot be suppressed. Artistic creativity is also a driving force that cannot be tamed, even though potentates keep trying. As in nature, creativity in art materializes as a constant urge, growth and change.

The fact that nature is subject to constant change in its forms is perhaps most evident in the four seasons. The fact that creativity also harbors the same creative potential for change is reflected in Herta’s work. Herta prevents her sculptures from solidifying by deliberately incorporating small joints and thus predicting the possibility of a change in form.

Because Herta experiences art as a driving force within herself similar to that in nature, her view is not narrowed to her own sculptural work. Like the forces of nature, all types of creativity remain quasi subterraneanly connected. It is no coincidence that Herta invites her sculptures to enter into a dialogue with other arts, be it the art of movement, music or acting. Examples include “Tronco”, a multi-day event at E-Werk 2015, and “Flor”, the expressive short project at Kunstverein Kirchzarten 2023. In both projects, several artistic disciplines were always intertwined.

Here on the slope in this spa garden, you will notice that Herta’s sculptures do not play to the fore with a dominating presence in all this greenery. They don’t want to compete with all these enormous giant trees.

Despite their own size, they blend into their surroundings in such a way that you almost have to look for them. The rust-coloured pipes wind their way out of the earth like organic lianas, only to disappear into it again in large curves. But this is precisely where the abstracted power of nature is embodied, pushing towards the light and at the same time spreading underground. And another parallel to nature is revealed in Herta’s creativity. It has spread beyond the park into the gardens of the Schlossberghotel. There you can encounter four more sculptures at the end of the tour.

Let’s conclude: the demands on art have changed a lot since Kant’s time: Art must take a stand, art must be political, art must hurt, art must shake things up, art must do this and art must do that! Contrary to Kant’s postulate that contemplation and art are completely purposeless, devoid of any intention, and should remain so, a capitalist art market has established itself with investment sums that are dizzying. And entire professions are involved in art mediation and claim to have the power of judgement.

Only one thing has not changed in the hype surrounding contemporary art, which that philosopher wisely foresaw and included in his thought process: the effect of sensual-aesthetic perception. And this is something that – then as now – everyone can only judge for themselves. With this in mind, I wish you a sensually lasting experience as you walk through this park.

 Regine Kemmerich-Lortzing