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Arguably the most significant painter of our time is the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Born in 1945 and brought up in the ruins of bombed German cities, his paintings portray a world devastated by war. What is intriguing about an exhibition of his work which has just opened at the Royal Academy however is that it shows his response the some of the most famous paintings of Van Gogh, a painter who lifts our hearts at the sheer beauty of life.

Kiefer’s paintings are vast, filling a whole wall, and using straw, ash, clay and lead powerfully convey a world laid desolate. With the continuing bombardment of Gaza, and the wars in Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere they well express a mood we all sometimes feel. The paintings also seem to convey a world now experiencing the effect of climate change. On the other hand, on a nice July morning our personal world can feel very different. Kiefer and Van Gogh seem to reflect the two different moods we all oscillate between, and in the end two very different stances on life. Of course Van Gogh’s paintings are not all just sunny optimism. In his famous painting of a corn field there are some black crows flying above. It has long been suggested that this reflects his mental instability, the fact that he cut his ear off and later died of a self-inflicted gunshot. But Kiefer in his response to that painting makes the crows even larger and more sinister, dominating the whole scene.

When I got home and told my wife, who does not fully share my enthusiasm for Anselm Kiefer, about the exhibition, she responded ‘Was there any redemption?’ Good question. In fact amongst all the greys and blacks of Kiefer’s paintings there are flecks and streaks of gold. In Icons and painting of the early Renaissance such as those of Duccio, there are great sheets of gold, gold representing the glory that is behind, beyond and within the universe. Perhaps Kiefer is saying that despite the desolation there is still some glory to be seen.

Few poets have expressed better than Robert Browning the way we can oscillate between a tragic and a hopeful view of life. In his poem Bishop Blougram’s apology he records how one moment we may be deeply pessimistic about life and then as he put it
There’s a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower bell, someone’s death,
A chorus ending from Euripides
And once again there is what he called ‘The grand perhaps’.
Flecks and streaks of gold as signs of a glory beyond and within. Perhaps.

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