Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Kiefer / Van Gogh
Royal Academy of Arts, London 28 June – 26 October 2025
Exhibition developed in close collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Supported by
With additional support from
Director of Exhibitions
Andrea Tarsia
Exhibition Curators
Julien Domercq with Natasha Fyffe
First proposed at the RA by Axel Rüger
Exhibition Organisation
Joanna Weston with Guy Carr
Photographic and Copyright Co-ordination
Giulia Ariete
Exhibition Catalogue
Royal Academy Publications
Simon Morris and Annalisa Burello
and other benefactors who wish to remain anonymous
This exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. The Royal Academy of Arts would like to thank HM Government for providing indemnity and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.
Florence Dassonville, Production and Distribution Co-ordinator
Carola Krueger, Production and Distribution Manager
Peter Sawbridge, Head of Publishing and Editorial Director
Copy-editing and proofreading: Kate Bell
Design: Kathrin Jacobsen
Colour origination: Tijdsbeeld Publishing and Graphius, Ghent; Gomer Press, Wales
Printed in Wales by Gomer Press
Text and images by Anselm Kiefer, copyright © 2025 Anselm Kiefer. Text by Simon Schama, copyright © 2025 Simon Schama. Texts were originally published in Anselm Kiefer: Where Have All the Flowers Gone © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2025. This arrangement copyright © 2025 Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House Piccadilly London W1J 0BD www.royalacademy.org.uk
EU Authorised Representative EAS Europe, Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia gpsr.requests@easproject.com
British Library Cataloguingin-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-915815-17-0
Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Riverside House, Dock Lane, Melton, Woodbridge, IP12 1PE
Distributed in the United States and Canada by ARTBOOK | D.A.P., 75 Broad Street, Suite 630, New York, NY 10004
Editorial Note
Dimensions of all works of art are given in centimetres, height before width (before depth).
Illustrations
Front cover: detail of cat. 19
Back cover: detail of cat. 9
Pages 2–3: detail of cat. 23
Page 6: detail of cat. 20
Page 9: detail of cat. 10
Page 10: detail of cat. 14
Pages 12–13: detail of cat. 5
Pages 54–5: detail of cat. 9
Pages 72–3: detail of cat. 21
Page 112: detail of cat. 1
Foreword
Vincent van Gogh was Anselm Kiefer’s first artistic inspiration. In 1963, aged 18, Kiefer followed in Van Gogh’s footsteps through the Netherlands, Belgium and Paris, ending up in Arles in southern France. On his travels, termed by Kiefer an ‘initiation journey’, he made drawings in the style of the pioneer of PostImpressionism, experiencing a profound kinship with him that endures to this day. This exhibition presents a selection of paintings and drawings by Van Gogh alongside Kiefer’s early sketches as well as new canvases that Kiefer painted in 2019 while consciously thinking about Van Gogh, and other works that testify to this continuing influence. The aim is not to compare, but instead to invite us to gain new insights into Van Gogh by seeing his work through Kiefer’s eyes, and likewise to experience Kiefer’s work through his meditations on an artist who has inspired him throughout his nearly sixty-year career.
The exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts and developed in close collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. The Royal Academy is indebted to the Van Gogh Museum for its exceptional loan of paintings and drawings by Van Gogh, and to its other lenders for agreeing to part, for a time, with some of their greatest treasures. It has been a pleasure to work closely with Anselm Kiefer, who has contributed with characteristic enthusiasm and dedication to this project. Particular thanks are owed to Waltraud Forelli and Lucas Pottier at Atelier Anselm Kiefer, and to Jay Jopling and Susannah Hyman at White Cube.
The exhibition in London is based on the Van Gogh Museum’s section of the two-venue exhibition ‘Anselm Kiefer: Sag mir wo die Blumen sind’, held jointly at the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum, marking an historic collaboration between these two institutions. At the Van Gogh Museum, the exhibition was curated by Emilie Gordenker and
Edwin Becker, whose generosity of spirit has been invaluable in bringing this project to London. At the Royal Academy, the exhibition was first proposed by Axel Rüger, formerly Secretary and Chief Executive, and has been curated by Julien Domercq, Curator, with Natasha Fyffe, Genesis Future Curator. It would have been impossible without the dedication and expertise of Joanna Weston, Exhibitions Manager, Guy Carr, Assistant Exhibitions Manager, and Giulia Ariete, Rights and Reproductions Manager, and of the exhibition designers Wayne Daly and Claire Lyon. Sincerest thanks are due to Andrea Tarsia, Director of Exhibitions, Idoya Beitia, Head of Exhibitions, and Adrian Locke, Chief Curator, for their tireless support, as well as to Peter Sawbridge, Head of Publishing and Editorial Director, and the RA Publications team for creating a catalogue that so perfectly reflects the spirit of this project. Finally, we thank the many other members of Royal Academy staff who have contributed to the exhibition’s development and delivery. We are extremely grateful to the supporters of this project, who have helped us to realise our ambitions. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Rothschild Foundation and White Cube. We also owe much gratitude to Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Founder of GRoW @ Annenberg, Simon Morris and Annalisa Burello and other benefactors who wish to remain anonymous. Last but not least, we thank H. E. Miguel Berger, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Kingdom, for his unwavering support.
Rebecca Salter cbe pra President, Royal Academy of Arts
Emilie E. S. Gordenker Director, Van Gogh Museum
4
Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73.7 × 92.1 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (by exchange)
Fig. 5
Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait, 1889. Oil on canvas, 57.8 × 44.5 cm.
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney
of a female rural worker (cat. 3). He writes about the struggle between the world created by the artist and the earth, which closes itself off.
I quote as I remember: ‘Truth happens in Van Gogh’s painting. This does not mean that something at hand is correctly portrayed, but rather that in the revelation of the equipmental being of the shoes beings as a whole – world and earth in their counterplay –attain to unconcealment.’ 1 The earth as the secret, which the artist in his struggle does not so much resolve as guard. Does that mean that it is only the
things that are put in a new context here, without emotion, without subjectivity, without reference to humanity? No. What we have in front of us is a wellordered, accessible structure, which at the same time contains an inaccessible secret. This is even more evident in the paintings that Van Gogh painted just before his death. Having reached the finishing line, having found the means, having become a master, having made up for his lack of talent, at a time when he could have continued in full command of his options –that is when he gave up.
Did Van Gogh give up, or is it as in Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem: ‘To the Fates’ (1796–98)?
Give me just one summer, you Mighty Ones!
And an autumn to perfect my song,
…
The soul denied its god-given right in life
Will not find rest down in Orcus either.
But when I have accomplished my great task, Perfected the poem on which my heart is set, Then be welcome, silence of the shadow world! 2
In Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night (fig. 4) of 1889 we have a completely different sky to that of the Wheatfield with Partridge , constructed from brushstrokes that form spirals. Then there is the strange dragon, which recalls St John’s Book of Revelation;3 and the stars, each of which creates its own spiral; and finally the moon, which is illuminated even inside its crescent. What comes to my mind is string theory – different multi-dimensional spaces arising out of each other – infinite numbers of strings that come together and are entangled for a short moment, detach themselves again – or not – and can be disentangled when you pull at one end. The cypress and the church spire, in contrast, are the only earth-bound elements in the painting. The spire, in particular, looks like a probe.
Fig.
those lines on the other side of the wall. There is not any aerial perspective that might – in some other way –continue the direction of the lines into the distance. The field before us seems to be squeezed by the surrounding walls – it seems to swell under the lateral pressure.
A large sun hangs above the mountains in the background. The concentric radiation spills out into the sky, the lines could be continued into the field, if there was not a wall. Thus, there are two foci: the large sun and the vanishing point, cut off by the straight line of the wall. They rival each other and cannot be reconciled within the painting. Earth and cosmos are separated. If we removed the wall, it would be a perfect picture.
What is most striking in The Church at Auverssur-Oise is the colour of the church windows (fig. 12). They are painted in the same Prussian blue as the dark sky, the same unreal deep blue as the sky above the wheatfield. The view through the windows does not show the interior of the church but the sky behind, as though the church were a ruin. But even if it were a ruin, that does not quite work either, because the viewpoint is such that we should be seeing the trees behind and not the sky. Only the openings in the spire are at the right height to reveal the sky – if the building were a ruin.
The interior of the church draws in the sky and presents the viewer with a second atmosphere of the same colour, enclosed within the walls of the building.
The church becomes the custodian of a bit of cut-out sky. The interior of the church becomes an imaginary space – it encloses what otherwise can only be found in the uncontained and infinite space. Different realities are nested one inside another, different perspectives interlock.
This makes me think of Alain-Fournier’s famous novel Le Grand Meaulnes (1913). It was the only book Alain-Fournier published – he died a year later in the First World War. Although I read it a long time ago, I still remember it as if I had read it yesterday, especially the opening pages with their interplay of dream and reality.
Fig. 12
Vincent van Gogh, The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise , 1890. Oil on canvas, 93 × 74.5 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Fig. 13
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with a Reaper, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73.2 × 92.7 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Fig. 16
Van Gogh and Kiefer: An Affinity of Sunflowers
Simon Schama
Why are so many drawn to the art of Anselm Kiefer, irrespective of where and when they encounter it? Because, invariably, his work is about something. Something other than contemporary art itself: its ephemeral ironies, its theory-clotted navel-gazing, its vulgar polemics, its cheaply bought, and expensively sold, moral posturing. In a multitude of ways Kiefer’s art is the enemy of the contemporary art world and its splashy carnival of vanities. It is, in all the ways that ultimately matter, serious. That might be said, too, of Vincent van Gogh. For all his craving to be supported and befriended by the art world of his own time, Van Gogh became so inured to its rejection that towards the end of his life he wrote to his friend, the painter Emile Bernard, that the only true paragon of an artist was Christ: ‘greater than all artists – disdaining marble and clay and paint – working in LIVING FLESH ’, making ‘neither statues nor paintings nor even books….. he states it loud and clear.. he made.. LIVING men, immortals’. Such thoughts, he explained: ‘[raise] us above art itself. They enable us to glimpse – the art of making life, the art of being immortal – alive.’ 1 Without too much hyperbole the same thing might reasonably be said of Anselm Kiefer, a restless intellect, whose work is also the tutor of thought. His reflections have driven the art of the past: the plight of humanity caught between nature and history; between the mapped earth and the infinite space of the cosmos; between compulsive destruction and unbidden
resurrection; between the relaxed descriptiveness of prose and the gem-sharp perceptions of poetry; between the choice of words and the design of images; salvation and despair; fertility and sterility; and (since fire can be the liberation of seed), incineration and germination. Nearly all of which is to say, between physical and metaphysical worlds.
Kiefer’s work, however mighty in confrontational power, is nonetheless at its core profoundly unselfsatisfied. In this respect too, he finds affinity with Van Gogh who, Kiefer says, ‘throughout his entire life ... wanted to do something great, and he was constantly failing.’ 2 Recalling times in the 1970s and 1980s when he felt ‘desperate’ at another failure, Kiefer would smother the unsatisfactory pictures with oil or shellac, a kind of alchemical potion, willing it to mutate into fresh animation. The perpetual possibility (or actuality) of destruction is the condition of creation; the endless morphing from nothing to something and back to nothing again. ‘Only iconoclast painters are painters’ he adds, 3 echoing Picasso’s belief that a painting is the sum of its many destructions.4 ‘To be able to begin again. usually what you want most when you have something that came to nothing is to begin it again. that’s how it is in life.’5 Kiefer says he likes to apply straw to his paintings (as he does in his homages to Van Gogh’s late wheatfields) ‘because you can burn it’.6
This perpetual itch of creative discontent, the reach for meaning beyond the frame, is the ultimate
Simon Schama in front of The Crows, Atelier Anselm Kiefer, Croissy, July 2024
prints to paintings and the installation of actual straw and wheat stalks at Gagosian Le Bourget (2012–13), all titled Morgenthau Plan (fig. 27). This was a proposal offered to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 by his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., as a vision of what to do with conquered Germany after the Second World War. To pre-empt any future recurrence of German belligerence, Morgenthau argued for a brutally Carthaginian peace. This entailed the permanent dismantling and destruction of its industrial heartland in the Ruhr and the conversion of industrial zones into purely agricultural country, accompanied, if necessary, by the enforced migration of millions of industrial workers into territory far removed from the temptations and wherewithal of re-armament. Initially the Plan met with a sympathetic hearing from the US President, but appalled opposition from members of his cabinet, including the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. In Germany itself the plan of ‘the Jew Morgenthau’ was pounced on by Joseph Goebbels to stiffen the resolve of national resistance to the economic reduction to what Winston Churchill called ‘primarily a pastoral and agricultural country’. This in turn led the most influential American generals conducting the campaign and occupation, in particular George Marshall and Lucius Clay, to urge the President to reject the plan as dangerously counter-productive. Though Dwight Eisenhower apparently toyed with the plan, by the time Kiefer learned about it in school in the 1950s, it had been abandoned, not least because its consequences were calculated to lead to mass starvation and because the stabilisation of German democracy, critically needed in the Cold War, would best be served by reconstruction rather than its opposite. Ever alert to the unintended ironies of history Kiefer has spoken about his amusement that what was intended in 1944 to punish and weaken Germany had, within a few years, precisely the
Fig. 27
Anselm Kiefer, Morgenthau Plan , 2012. Acrylic, emulsion, oil and shellac on inkjet prints, mounted on canvas, overall: 330 × 570.1 × 7.9 cm, 3 panels, each: 330 × 190 × 8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Denise and Andrew Saul Fund, 2013
Fig. 28
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield under Thunderclouds, 1890. Oil on canvas, 50.4 × 101.3 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
opposite effect. But, also predictably, imagining what a transformed Germany might have looked like, Kiefer produced images of a country given over to wildflower meadows and ripening grain that had something of a neo-Romantic allure; not so much a draconian punishment as an inadvertent gift. Not, of course, a straightforward social bonus; some of the iterations, based on photographs of fields and meadows near his former studio-estate, now part of the Eschaton Foundation, in Barjac in the southern region of the Gard, are darkened with shellac and are anything but bucolic. But other paintings feature rows of cow parsley (known in America more poetically as Queen Anne’s lace) set parallel to the picture plane and seen close-up beneath mildly suspended clouds, as if from the point of view of a field mouse. The installation at Gagosian had a gallery to itself, the rows of straw and wheat planted between the walls of the white cube, so that the piece is, at the same time, barrier and cereal playground, felicitous and ominous, just the way Kiefer likes it, at least where history is concerned.
Vincent van Gogh’s last year and a half was full of such compositional barriers and disorientations: gardens and parks in which trees stand sentinel against admission; figures, lovers lost, perhaps happily, perhaps not, in the suburban woods. Like Kiefer, I too do not believe that during Van Gogh’s stay at Auvers-sur-Oise, where he shot himself in a wheatfield, disorientation was tantamount to a loss of mental control. His creative productivity during 1890 was in fact astonishing – almost unprecedented in his short career – and several letters written to his brother Theo express a kind of creative rapture (fig. 28). That he was personally distressed is also certain, but the reasons might have been domestic; a panicked anxiety about the consequences of Theo’s intention to give up his regular job at the art gallery for an independent
5
Vincent van Gogh Field with Irises near Arles, 1888 Oil on canvas, 54 × 65 cm Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Vincent van Gogh
Landscape with Figures Pushing Wheelbarrows, 1890
Pencil on paper, 23.8 × 31.9 cm Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Emma O’Donoghue
Eleanor Olver
Neil Osborn and Holly Smith
Sir Michael Palin
Cynthia Philips
Mr Adam and Mrs Michelle Plainer
Lady Purves
Ms Mouna Rebeiz
Peter Rice Esq
Erica Roberts
Miss Elaine Rowley
Mrs Janice Sacher
Mr Adrian Sassoon
David & Heather Shaw
Ms Elena Shchukina
Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE
Mr Jeremy Sillem
Mrs Marianna E Simpson
Mrs Jane Smith
Lady Henrietta St George
Miss Sarah Straight
Mrs Ziona Strelitz
Mr Anthony J Todd
Mrs Kirsten Tofte Jensen
Mr Andrew Tseng
Ms Roxane Vacca
Mrs Madhavi Vadera
Mrs Inez Vegelin Van Claerbergen
Marek and Penny Wojciechowski
John and Carol Wates
The Duke and Duchess of Wellington
Ms Christine Westwood-Davis
Mr and Mrs Anthony Williams
Mrs Adriana Winters
Yang Xu
David Zwirner and those who wish to remain anonymous
Young Patrons
Dr Ghadah W. Alharthi
Mr Usman Ali
Miss Aishwarya Anam
Adnan Bashir
Yevheniya Bazhenova
Lucinda Bellm
Mr Nicholas Bonsall
Mr Matthew Charlton
Mr Chen Guangzhao
Miss XiaoMeng Cheng
Ms Caroline Cole
Laetitia Contat Desfontaines
Sophie Dickson
Harry Eddmonds
Mr Duncan Forbes
Dr Brian Fu
Rebecca Glenapp
Miss Amelia Hunton
Mr Tobias Kay
Ms Victoria Kleiner
Daria Kocherova
Miss Madeleine Kowitz
Cheneviere
Alinda Kring
Miss Matilda Liu
Mr Jean-David Malat
Mrs Aytan Mehdiyeva
Jessie Merwood
Mr Timothy Meyers
Miss Yekaterina Munk
Mr Thomas Mustier
Miss Mimi Nguyen
Mr Garth Oates
Milaap Patel
Danielle Petitti
Ms Julie Scotto
Fazilet Seçgin
Daniil Shagramanyants
Mr Thomas Sittek
Mr John Smith
Lindsay Smith
Gigi Surel
Ryan Sebastian Taylor
Maria Toxavidi
Miss Lucy von Goetz
Dimitrios WeedonTopalopoulos
Mr & Mrs Harry Walker
Sofiya Zhevago and those who wish to remain anonymous
Patron Donors
Kate de Rothschild Agius and Marcus Agius CBE
The Michael and Nicola Sacher
Charitable Trust
Mrs Leslie Bacon
The de Laszlo Foundation
The William Brake Foundation
Lady Sylvia Jay
Mr D H Killick
The Michael and Nicola Sacher
Charitable Trust
The Celia Walker Art Foundation
Ms Cynthia Wu and those who wish to remain anonymous
Trustees of the Royal Academy Trust
Registered Charity No. 1067270
Honorary President
His Majesty King Charles III
Trustees
Batia Ofer (Chair)
Sally Tennant OBE (Vice-Chair)
President (ex officio)
Treasurer (ex officio)
Secretary and Chief Executive (ex officio)
Stefan Bollinger
Melanie Clore
Andrew Cohen
Martin Ephson OBE
Pesh Framjee
Denise Gardner
Clive Humby OBE
Sébastien Mazella di Bosco
Scott Mead
Siobhán Moriarty
Paulo Pereira
Lisa Reuben
Robbie Robinson
Bianca Roden
Ina Sarikhani Weston
Katy Wickremesinghe
The Hon William Yerburgh
Emeritus and Honorary Trustees
Lord Aldington
Susan Burns
Sir David Cannadine FBA
Sir Trevor Chinn CVO
John Coombe
Elizabeth Crain
Lord Davies of Abersoch CBE
Sir Lloyd Dorfman CBE
Ambassador Edward E Elson
John Entwistle OBE
Michael Gee
HRH Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece
C. Hugh Hildesley
Anya Hindmarch CBE
Susan Ho
The Lady Lever of Manchester
Sir Sydney Lipworth KC
The Rt Hon Lord Luce GCVO DL
Philip Marsden
Dame Carolyn McCall DBE
Sir Keith Mills GBE DL
Ludovic de Montille
Lady Alison Myners
John Raisman CBE
Sir Simon Robertson
Maryam Sachs
The Hon Richard Sharp
David Stileman
Robert Suss
Peter Williams
Corporate Membership of the Royal Academy of Arts
Launched in 1988, the Royal Academy’s Corporate Membership Scheme offers company benefits for staff, clients and community partners and access to the Academy’s facilities and resources. We thank all members for their valuable support and continued enthusiasm.
Premier
A&O Shearman
BNY
Chanel
Charles Stanley
Convex UK Services Limited (Convex Group)
Evelyn Partner
EY
FTI Consulting
JM Finn & Co.
JTI
KPMG LLP
Riverstone Living
Sotheby’s
Van Cleef & Arpels
Viking
Corporate
AlixPartners LLP
Bloomberg LP
Christie’s
Clifford Chance LLP
Digitalis
Eastdil Secured
Edelman
Hakluyt & Company
HSBC
Marie Curie
Pictet
Rathbone Investment
Management Ltd
Sisk
Teneo
The Royal Society of Chemistry
Trowers & Hamlins
Value Retail
Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP
Associate
Bank of America
Beaumont Nathan
Deutsche Bank AG
Generation Investment
Management LLP
Imperial College Healthcare
Charity
Lazard
The Boston Consulting Group
UK LLP
The Cultivist
Corporate Founding Benefactors
BNY
Index Ventures
Newton Investment Management
Sisk
Sky
Corporate Partners
AXA XL
Bloomberg Philanthropies
BNP Paribas
Edwardian Hotels
Epson
House of Creed
Insight Investment
Corporate Supporters
Amathus
BNY Anniversary Partner of the Royal Academy of Arts
Burberry
Claridge’s
Convex UK Services Limited (Convex Group)
Natalia Cola Foundation
Fortnum & Mason
Gagosian
Hermès GB
L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry
Arts, supported by Van Cleef & Arpels
Loro Piana
Louis Roederer
Natixis
Officina ProfumoFarmaceutica di Santa
Maria Novella
PMC Speakers
Rocco Forte Hotels
Stewarts
VisitGuernsey
White Cube