AMSTERDAM (AP) — When he was simply 17 years previous, German artist Anselm Kiefer retraced the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh from the Netherlands by means of Belgium and into France.
Now, greater than half a century later, the museum named for the Dutch grasp is becoming a member of forces for the primary time with the neighboring Stedelijk trendy and modern artwork museum in Amsterdam to stage a blockbuster exhibition of Kiefer’s work, titled “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind,” a reference to people singer Pete Seeger’s iconic pacifist anthem “Where have all the flowers gone?”
Kiefer stated he didn’t got down to make an completely anti-war exhibition, although he carefully follows world occasions together with the battle triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I don’t say ‘I do now an exhibition against the war.’ This I don’t do because this is a program; I’m not a programmatic artist,” he said. “I do what is in me, what has to come out. And that is about all kinds of things, about the dead, about the war.”
Kiefer’s typically bleak work, rooted in rising up in post-World Warfare II Germany, may not instantly really feel carefully associated to Van Gogh’s vibrant and richly coloured landscapes and vases of sunflowers.
However check out Kiefer’s 2019 “The Crows,” alongside Van Gogh’s 1890 “Wheatfield with Crows,” and the inspiration for the German’s work jumps from the wall.
The brooding black birds aren’t the one shared topics that the 2 artists depict.
Certainly one of Van Gogh’s most well-known inspirations — sunflowers — additionally seem in Kiefer’s works.
An enormous dried sunflower hangs the wrong way up in a glass cupboard, shedding its seeds on a e-book constituted of lead sheets, whereas “Sol Invictus” reveals a sunflower towering over the artist, who’s mendacity in a yoga place referred to as the corpse pose.
The present additionally consists of a few of his sketches from his journey retracing Van Gogh’s footsteps.
The 79-year-old German artist has a protracted relationship not simply with Van Gogh, but additionally with the Stedelijk and Dutch collectors who purchased a few of his early works. The Stedelijk is exhibiting early items comparable to a sculpture of an aeroplane resembling a B-1 bomber that’s manufactured from lead and known as “Journey to the end of the Night.”
The centerpiece of the Stedelijk is the set up for which the present is called. Constructed up across the museum’s central staircase, it options paint-splattered garments on hangers and flower petals spilling down work and into piles on the ground, amongst many issues.
Kiefer stated that he wrote one of many strains within the Seeger tune, which was later additionally sung in German by Marlene Dietrich, on the wall as a part of the set up: “Who will ever learn?”
“This sentence makes the song philosophical,” he advised reporters. “You realize, as a result of we can’t perceive. We can’t perceive, for instance, that in the present day issues occurred in (19)33 on the planet.”
Requested in regards to the rise of the far-right Various for Germany get together that surged in final month’s German election, he stated: “It’s horrible.”
The large central work is made up of a protracted checklist of parts together with emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, golf leaf, sediment of electrolysis, dried flowers, straw, cloth and metal.
The straw options in lots of Kiefer’s work, giving them a posh floor that typically echoes Van Gogh’s daring brush strokes.
“He’s working like a form of … alchemist remodeling materials into an artwork,” curator Edwin Becker of the Van Gogh Museum advised The Related Press.
The exhibition opens March 7 and runs till June 9 on the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum.
