Kiefer/Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Vincent Van Gogh was Anselm Kiefer's first artistic inspiration. In 1963, aged 18, Kiefer received a travel bursary that allowed him to follow in Vincent Van Gogh's foosteps through the Netherlands, Belgium and France, starting in Paris and ending up in Arles in Provence. On Kiefer's travels, which he described as an 'initiation journey', he made drawings in the style of the pioneer of Post-Impressionism, experiencing a profound artistic kinship with him that endures to this day.
'Contrary to what one might expect of a teenager, I was not overly interested in the emotional aspect of Van Gogh's work or in his unhappy life. What impressed me was the rational structure, the confident construction of his paintings, in a life that was increasingly slipping out of his control'.
A wonderful and thought-provoking exhibition, featuring two of my favourite artists. An exhibition of a selection of paintings and drawings by Van Gogh together with early sketches by Kiefer, as well as canvases that he painted in 2019 while reflecting on his artistic forebear. Alongside these works others were featured that testify to his continuing influence.
The exhibition explored how both artists have approached common themes - nature, literature, transcience and the universe.
It is impossible to appreciate Kiefer's work from photographs. One has to see it 'in the flesh' so to speak: in photographs it all looks flat, whereas it's nothing of the sort. Because of that I will be posting a lot of close-ups, hoping that this will show the complex, varied texture of each piece. More than with any other artist I can think of, it's important to look at the materials used to make each painting. Kiefer does use conventional materials, such as oil and acrylic paints, watercolour and photography, but he combines them with more unusual elements such as straw, seeds, lead and gold leaf. In some of his paintings, Kiefer scorches their surface with fire, evoking a sense of destruction and desolation.
At first glance, Kiefer's monumental works of art may not appear to have much in common with the smaller canvases of Van Gogh. Despite the differences in the materials used, the two artists share an affinity for painterly surface textures.
Their works are also related through their use of recurring motifs from nature such as earth, fields of wheat, sunflowers and crows, all alluding to the cycle of life. Van Gogh's love for and repeated use of yellow is also mirrored in the works of Kiefer, who sees the Dutch artist's recurrent golden skies and fields as resembling the gilding of religious icons. The influence of Van Gogh on Kiefer can also be seen in relation to the use of compositional devices characterised by elements depicted at close range combined with deep perspectives, high horizon lines and panoramic formats.
Kiefer, like Van Gogh, is deeply influenced by literature and poetry. Van Gogh read widely, once remarking in a letter to his brother Theo: 'books and reality and art are the same kind of thing for me'. Novels he read and sometimes even included in his works often add a further layer of meaning to his paintings and drawings. Kiefer's works frequently relate to mythology or philosophical concepts. He also uses the written word to enhance the meanings of his paintings, sometimes acting as a foil to interrogate their meaning.
Anselm Kiefer, The Crows, 2019, (emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, straw and clay on canvas)
looking closer
looking closer
looking closer
Anselm Kiefer, Hortus Coclusus, 2007-14, (collage of woodcuts on canvas with acrylic and shellac)
For Kiefer, just as for Van Gogh, the sunflower symbolises the cycle of life. 'First the sunflower is connected to the stars, because it moves its head against the sun. And in the night, it's closed. The moment they explode they are yellow and fantastic: that's already the declining point. So sunflowers are a symbol of our condition d'etre'.
The man lying at their base might be the artist himself, adopting the 'savanasa', the yoga position also known as the 'corpse pose', in which practitioners imagine themselves dead, their souls at one with nature.
looking closer
Anselm Kiefer, Nevermore, 2014, (emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf and sediment of electrolysis on canvas)
The title of this painting refers to The Raven, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, in which a grieving man is driven mad by a raven repeating the word 'Nevermore'.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On a pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted-nevermore!
looking closer
Anselm Kiefer, Walther von Volgelweide: Under the Lime Tree on the Heather, 2014, (emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, sedement of electrolysis and charcoal on canvas)
Vincent Van Gogh, Sunflowers Gone to Seed, 1887, (oil on cotton)
Vincent Van Gogh, Poppy Field, 1890, (oil on canvas)
This canvas was painted near the town of Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh spent the last three months of his life. Quick dabs of thick paint animate the sky and the field in a whirlwind of energy, giving the impression of an impending storm. Composed of hirizontal bands of colour enlivered by the verticals of distant trees, this late work of the artist's mature style seems to teeter on the edge of abstraction.
Vincent Van Gogh, Snow-covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet), 1890, (oil on canvas)
While in the hospital at Saint-Remy, Van Gogh painted 21 copies, or rather translations, after works by Jean-Francois Millet, an artist known for his depictions of the toil of peasant farmers. Although working from a black and white print of Winter, the Plain of Chailly, Van Gogh re-imagined it in this version as a study in icy blues and greens, conveying a powerful sense of mood.
looking closer
looking closer
Vincent Van Gogh, Snow-covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet), 1890, (oil on canvas)
While in the hospital at Saint-Remy, Van Gogh painted 21 copies, or rather translations, after works by Jean-Francois Millet, an artist known for his depictions of the toil of peasant farmers. Although working from a black and white print of Winter, the Plain of Chailly, Van Gogh re-imagined it in this version as a study in icy blues and greens, conveying a powerful sense of mood.
Van Gogh painted six portraits of Mme Ginoux, the owner of the Cafe de la Gare, where he lived during his first months in Arles. None were painted from life but instead taken from a drawing Paul Gaughin had left at Van Gogh's lodgings following his unsuccessful stay in Arles in the autumn of 1888. With its vivid colours, simplified forms and flattened space, this work stands as one of Van Gogh's most pared-down paintings. On the table are two books: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Christimas Stories by Charles Dickens.
Van Gogh, Field with Irises near Arles, 1888, (oil on canvas)
This painting shows Van Gogh's love of colour contrasts. In it, the purple of the irises is set against the yellow of the field, and in the background the green of trees is a foil for orange roofs. Describing this work as just like 'a Japanese dream' in a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh made use of compositional devides found in Japanese woodblock prints, such as zooming in on a foreground detail, juxtaposed with a deep perspective onto the distant town in the background.
looking closer
For Sigmund Freud, the concept of Eros and Thanatos (the gods of love and death in Greek mythology) relates to his belief that human behaviour is driven by two primary forces: the life instinct and the death instinct. The scythe in the painting is both used to cut the ripened wheat, but is also carried by the personification of death. Set against the golden landscape, it serves as a reminder of the precarious equilibrium of life.
looking closer
looking closer
Kiefer and Van Gogh's artistic kinship goes beyond technique, subject matter and a love of the written word. For both artists, a painting of a field is not merely a view, of wheat or earth, but is imbued with a deeper meaning. Kiefer believes a landscape also stands as a silent witness of human history, while for Van Gogh it was a conduit to express intense feelings and emotions.
looking closer
Kiefer's Starry Night was painted as a direct allusion to Van Gogh's painting of the same title. Kiefer sees Van Gogh's original as almost transcendental, linking life with death, the earth with the cosmos, the spiral of its sky taking on the guise of a sea monster: 'Like the tentacles of kraken, the serpent-dragon's arms coil around empty spaces that are wrapped and twisted around themselves. The moon and the stars orbit around themselves, each forming their own cosmos, separate from the dominant spiral nebula and the cosmic river on the horizon, and connected to the whole by means of forceful brushstrokes alone'.
Fascinated by the night sky, a window into a mysterious universe, Kiefer focuses on the highly schematised firmanent of Van Gogh's work, replacing its sinuous strokes of dark blue paint with bundles of golden wheat. By making the sky out of crops that grow from the soil, Kiefer suggests the profound connection between heaven and earth.
According to Kiefer, Van Gogh shows us what we cannot understand and projects us into a 'restlessness that cannot be stilled': 'In Van Gogh, there is always something more, not in the sense of something extra or a bonus, the 'something more' is everything, the beyond-subatomic smallest that can no longer be represented and only grasped through mathematical abstraction as well as the biggest - beyond all light years'.
looking closer
Vincent Van Gogh, Shoes, 1856, (oil on canvas)
This painting of well-worn shoes is, for Kiefer, a portrait of sorts in their owner's absence, a relic of journeys past and at the same time a symbol of what is to come. It reminds him of the essay The Origin of the Work of Art, by Martin Heidegger, who, Kiefer recalls, 'writes about the struggle between the world created by the artist and the earth, which closes itself off'.
