I wanted to show the vast difference of scale, if not of impact, between the two artists in this exhibition: Poppy Field by Van Gogh, seen on the right and,looming through the doorway, part of The Starry Night by Anselm Kiefer, which takes up the entire back wall in the next gallery.
Kiefer covers his canvases with a large range of materials, of which straw is a a major component. They are fully formed yet on the verge of collapse,
tufts of straw hanging off like birds’ nests and even the head of a broom on the canvas. How did that get to be there? I imagine it might have been used to move stuff around and got stuck.
As this title indicates, love, life and death are the sum total of our existence: the cycle of growth, fecundity, harvest and decay in farming and life.
Both Van Gogh and Kiefer explore this passage of time, each in their own very particular way.
