Kiefer/Van Gogh

Pairing the paintings of Van Gogh with paintings by contemporary artists has become increasingly common. Last year the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam demonstrated Matthew Wong’s debt to the Post-Impressionist in a show that travelled to the Kunsthaus Zürich and has just closed at the Albertina in Vienna. Earlier this year the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum displayed 25 works by Anselm Kiefer alongside paintings by Van Gogh. This show is now arriving at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (28 June–26 October). Kiefer has long been fascinated by Van Gogh; when he was 18 he made a pilgrimage through Europe to places where the Dutchman had lived. More recently, Kiefer’s paintings of sunflowers – towering, dry and blackened – seem, in their austerity, almost a rebuke to Van Gogh’s blazing visions. The Starry Night (2019), a stand-out of the show made using straw, gold leaf and sediment of electrolysis, is a typically tactile take on Van Gogh’s painting of the same name.

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The Crows (2019), Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet; courtesy the artist/White Cube; © the artist

Field with Irises near Arles (1888), Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

The Starry Night (2019), Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet; courtesy the artist/White Cube; © the artist