Anselm Kiefer Transforms Van Gogh’s Sunny Scenes into Dark Dreams: An Artistic Clash Explored

Vincent van Gogh entered the world in 1853, during the relatively tranquil times of the 19th century. Had he not ended his life in a wheat field at 37, he might have lived to see the upheavals of the World War I era by his 60s. Had he survived until 80, he could have been reading about Adolf Hitler’s rise to power at a café in Arles. By 92, he might have been watching the haunting images of Belsen’s survivors in newsreels.

These reflections are prompted by the Royal Academy’s unusual and compelling exhibition. It features an intriguing engagement with the prominent living German painter who is celebrating his 80th birthday, and his idol, Van Gogh. The display pairs the German artist’s works, ranging from his teenage sketches to his recent gold-flecked wheat field scenes, with those of the Dutch master. The effect is startling, making you ponder how Van Gogh, had he lived longer, might have depicted the grim realities of modern history.

Born in the cataclysmic year of 1945, Kiefer grew up amidst the revelations of the Holocaust from Germany’s rubble. His artistic career has been a prolonged battle against oblivion, employing paintings, performances, and installations. Featured in this exhibit is his expansive 2019 work, The Last Load, depicting a European scene beneath a darkened sky, transformed into a barren, twisted landscape of stumps and stubble, with straw embedded in thick, earthy strokes of paint. The scene unmistakably hints at the rail tracks leading to Auschwitz.

Displayed nearby is a pair of worn shoes from Van Gogh’s 1886 work, Shoes. Within this setting, these weathered boots—resembling monuments to absent feet—evoke the piles of shoes, suitcases, and glasses left behind by Holocaust victims. Another painting by Van Gogh, Piles of French Novels, similarly assumes a memorial dimension: a mound of books, a mass of forgotten tales.

It’s Van Gogh’s uncanny ability to portray ordinary objects like his shoes and books as if they were artifacts from the past that, through Kiefer’s somber interpretation, casts him as a foreseer of the Holocaust. This portrayal is powerful and disturbing. Unlike an earlier version of this exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which overlooked the darker aspects of Van Gogh’s works, this show merges Kiefer and Van Gogh in a haunting, romantic memento mori, echoing the themes of Paul Celan’s Holocaust poem, Death Fugue.

Kiefer’s massive painting sends ominous black crows soaring over a stormy wheat field, echoing Van Gogh’s Wheatfield With Crows, which is often seen as a prelude to his suicide. Kiefer titles this piece Nevermore, referencing Celan: “we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room”.

Kiefer’s interpretation of Van Gogh lacks subtlety but is impactful and emotionally resonant, much like Don McLean’s song Vincent. Kiefer portrays himself prostrated by weltschmerz amidst a field of giant, blackened sunflowers, finding somberness even in Van Gogh’s most vibrant motifs. Curiously, this gloomy vision finds a counterpart in Van Gogh’s 1887 work, Sunflowers Gone to Seed, a somber depiction of nature’s decay.

Even Van Gogh’s 1890 work, Poppy Field, appears here as a haunting prelude to the bloodshed of World War I, with its vivid red flowers set under a disquietingly calm sky, reflecting the somber moods of Van Gogh’s last days.

The exhibition eerily succeeds in aligning Van Gogh with Kiefer’s vision. Yet, when Kiefer attempts to channel Van Gogh’s lighter side, the result feels insincere; his use of gold leaf and real corn on large canvases lacks the depth and intensity of Van Gogh’s work. Despite this, the exhibition reveals a truth: while it draws out modern calamities, Van Gogh painted in a time before such horrors were known, portraying a more innocent natural world. Kiefer’s attempts to capture this same joy feel forced in a world that has lost its innocence, his work reflecting contemporary sorrow with metallic, forced joy.