Totentanz: Eros, Death, and Ego as Explored Through the Art of Horst Janssen in Postwar German

For centuries, art has explored the relationships between love and death. However, throughout history these core aspects of life have developed significant taboos and can raise a wide variety of emotions within contemporary society. German artist Horst Janssen (1929-95) thoroughly examined this relationship between love and death through the production of prolific drawings, etchings, and prints in the twentieth century. With a specific focus on Janssen's intaglio series Totentanz (1973/74), the links between these concepts of love and death, and their capacity for activating taboos are further examined. Using a psychoanalytic methodology as a foundation, the close correlation between love and death will help accentuate the longstanding taboos that have been established around this relationship. Existential thought has grown throughout post war Europe and therefore the relationship between these themes of love and death are relevant to core constructs of the individual as humankind searches for and creates meaning. Horst Janssen's art comingles desire, fear, and the sense of self, and this following work aims at developing signification by identifying and clarifying the relationship between love and death and that relationship's greater connection to the cycle of life and the spiritual belief in a rebirth through death.