
Anselm Kiefer Wonders if We'll Ever Learn
This installation is the title work of Kiefer's monumental solo exhibition, which comprises about 25 paintings, 13 drawings and three films by Kiefer, from 1973 to the present, in addition to eight van Gogh works. 'Sag mir wo die Blumen sind,' or 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,' sprawls across two of Amsterdam's largest modern art museums, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk.
The show, which opens on Friday — the day after Kiefer's 80th birthday — and runs through June 9, is the result of ambitious collaboration between the adjacent institutions in the heart of the city. Mounting the exhibit at two museums made sense on a sheer physical level, too, because of the size of Kiefer's vision: Nearly every work takes up a wall or a room.
What links the two parts of this 'diptych,' as the curator Edwin Becker calls the dual exhibition, is Kiefer's antiwar sentiment, which is expressed in subtle and overt ways.
The title and the new piece at the center of the Stedelijk refer to the 1955 protest anthem 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,' a folk song by Pete Seeger (although Kiefer uses the lyrics from the German version popularized by Marlene Dietrich in the early 1960s).
'The most important sentence in this song is 'When will we ever learn,'' Kiefer said in an interview. 'The rest of the song is a little bit kitschy, but this is a deeper thing. We don't know why things repeat all the time. We have a situation now like in 1933 in Germany, it's horrible.'
Kiefer, born in Donaueschingen, Germany at the tail end of World War II, has long grappled with the legacy of fascism, political violence and cultural memory.
'War has been a running theme throughout his whole body of work,' said Leontine Coelewij, a curator of the exhibition and a curator of contemporary art at the Stedelijk. 'Already his first works had to deal with the Second World War, but since then it has taken many different forms.'
In 1969, when Kiefer was a 24-year-old art student, he traveled across Europe to make a performance piece, 'Occupations,' posing at historic sites. He dressed in hippie gowns and business suits and held his arm out in a Nazi salute. 'Heroic Symbols,' his resulting photo series, 'was really a provocation to the people in Germany who did not want to talk about the war,' Coelewij said.
As a young artist, when such subjects were still taboo in Germany, Kiefer felt exiled from his home country, in terms of his artwork. He found an audience at the Stedelijk, which also acquired his work from the 1980s.
The first work in the current show is his 1981 painting 'Innerraum' (Interior), a view of the skylit chamber of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the decaying empty room where Adolf Hitler once met with his members of his military to map out his destruction and seizure of Europe.
Kiefer's works 'are very much about politics, but maybe not specific politics,' Coelewij said. She added, 'We can all think of situations in the world where we can see the absurdity of war, and ask: Why does it still happen?'
The current exhibition didn't originate as an antiwar show; it was conceived by Emilie Gordenker shortly after she became director of the Van Gogh Museum in 2020. The previous year, Kiefer had given a lecture at Tate Britain museum in London about his relationship with van Gogh, and then made a series of huge landscape paintings inspired by van Gogh's work.
Kiefer said that van Gogh has been an influence since he was about 13 years old. In 1963, at age 18, he received a travel fellowship to follow in the footsteps of van Gogh throughout Europe. He began in van Gogh's birthplace, Zundert, in the Netherlands, traveled through Belgium and Paris, and finally hitchhiked to the South of France. He stayed for a few months in Fourques, near Arles, where van Gogh painted his most renowned works, like his 'Sunflowers' series.
'He worked very hard, because he had no talent, you know,' Kiefer said. 'The last two years he did all for what he's now famous. That's because he didn't stop. He kept painting and painting.'
The Van Gogh Museum's part of the Kiefer exhibition juxtaposes Kiefer's huge landscape paintings, some almost 30 feet across, including 'Die Krähen (The Crows),' from 2019, and 'De sterrennacht' (The Starry Night), from 2024 — lashed through with stalks of hay — with van Gogh paintings. Van Gogh's 'Wheat Field With Crows,' (1890) and his 'Sunflowers Gone to Seed' (1890) hang across the room, showing the undeniable influence, though they appear minuscule by comparison.
Kiefer's landscapes, too, 'are burdened by history,' said Becker, the head of exhibitions at the Van Gogh Museum. His layers of paint, a mudlike impasto, oil and acrylic paints mixed with raw materials like soil, iron, straw and dead leaves, form deep furrows on the canvas. These landscapes, with van Gogh's high horizon lines, all seem to be ruins, shot through with blood and shrapnel.
Kiefer said that his work isn't meant to depict politics or any specific world event. But he stays abreast of current events, and said that recently he has felt a physical sense of threat by the rise of right-wing authoritarian leadership, both in Germany and in the United States. 'What happens now there is for me a kind of parallel,' he said.
As he turns 80, Kiefer doesn't seem to be slowing down or holding back. 'When I paint, I don't paint with my head, it's with my body,' he said. He added that he knows so much about war 'that it's logical that it comes through. It's me, my body, that brings it onto the canvas. It's not intended to warn people, but I do hope it's a warning.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Newsweek
15 hours ago
- Newsweek
Couple Adopt Puppy From Shelter, DNA Reveals Unbelievable Mix
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. When dog owner Milly, from Ohio, posted photos of her 5-month-old dog Bess online, she wasn't expecting the flood of admiration that followed. "We keep getting asked if she is a 'designer dog' but we really just lucked out with the shelter," the owner said in a Reddit post with thousands of upvotes and more than 100 comments. An unusual mix of Siberian husky and golden retriever, Bess has the classic markings of a husky with unmistakable long fur and floppy ears of a golden retriever. Bess is more than just photogenic. She's the emotional bridge for Ellie, Milly's 6-year-old German shepherd who had suffered years of abuse under a backyard breeder. When Ellie arrived at the family's home in 2024, she had endured multiple litters and was emotionally struggling. "Ellie would howl and cry every time she saw a puppy, so we decided she needed one of her own. We began searching through the local shelter websites and came across Bess' litter in April of 2025," Milly, who didn't give a surname, told Newsweek. Pictures of Bess, the unusual mixed breed who often gets mistaken for a designer dog. Pictures of Bess, the unusual mixed breed who often gets mistaken for a designer dog. OhioIsForCats/Reddit Bess and her litter were born at our local Humane Society and were featured at an adoption event in May. They didn't last long as her entire litter was adopted out within 30 minutes. "We knew from the website that she was a retriever mix, and the coloring showed she was likely some type of husky as well," Milly said. "We did a doggy DNA swab and found that she is 50 percent golden retriever with the rest being mostly Siberian husky and a little border collie, as well." In the comments on Reddit, people couldn't get enough of Bess' unusual looks. "Wow! She's gorgeous!!! Those markings and that face," said one commenter. While another said: "So cute. 50 percent golden, 50 percent husky, 110 percent shedding machine." Beyond the aesthetics, Bess is a sweet soul. She's already mastered five speech buttons to communicate with her humans—and has a penchant for full-body tail wags any time she spots someone new. "She's too cute not to share. The reactions online were very similar to what we see in-person: absolute gushing over her cuteness," Milly said. "It's lovely to see how much people love Bess. She is not only a beautiful puppy, but she is so sweet and smart, too." This isn't the first time a rare dog breed mix has impressed people online. A half basset hound and half English bulldog captured viral attention previously on Reddit, while another unusual breed mix left people guessing after the owner shared pictures on the internet. Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@ with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.

a day ago
Vandals set fire to a mouse statue that's a TV star and mascot for a German broadcaster
BERLIN -- Vandals set fire to a mouse statue that's a TV star and mascot for children's programming at German broadcaster WDR, the television station said Saturday. The cartoon mouse, known only as 'Die Maus,' is the eponymous star of 'Die Sendung mit der Maus' (The Show with the Mouse) since it first aired in West Germany in 1971. Each short episode features other languages and educational segments. The statue — featuring the character's famous orange body with brown ears, arms and legs — greets families and children outside a media building in Cologne, Germany. A receptionist for WDR saw several young people standing around the statue in Cologne on a camera feed overnight Friday into Saturday. She then noticed flames and called the fire department, WDR said. The fire blackened parts of the mouse's face and arm, images show. The station said a police complaint had been filed against an unidentified person. Matthias Körnich, head of children's programming for WDR, said it's not just a figurine that was damaged. 'A piece of childhood, a symbol of joy and togetherness has been attacked,' he said. 'The mouse belongs to Cologne.' The mouse statue isn't the first German TV character to be attacked. In 2009, the statue of a depressed German loaf of bread named Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread) was stolen from his traditional place outside the town hall in Erfurt, where German children's public television channel KiKA is based. Bernd, a cult classic in Germany, was held hostage for nearly two weeks before being discovered unharmed in an abandoned barracks.


New York Post
a day ago
- New York Post
WWII vet marks 102nd birthday and plans for his long-awaited bar mitzvah: ‘The best is yet to come'
A World War II veteran rang in his 102nd birthday surrounded by loved ones in Florida — but said 'the best is yet to come' as he sets out to cross off his bucket-list goals, including a long-awaited bar mitzvah. New York City native Harold Terens was overcome with love and gratitude Saturday morning as he celebrated another year of life with dozens of friends and family, among them his second wife, three children, eight grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren, at a hotel in Delray Beach. 'Best day of my life, believe it or not, and I've had so many,' Terens told The Post, adding he felt his beloved first wife, Thelma, with whom he was married for 70 years, was there in spirit. Advertisement 6 WWII veteran Harold Terens celebrated his 102nd birthday with family and friends Saturday. AP 'I thought my wedding last year in Normandy was the best day of my life, but I think today topped it. And believe me, the best is yet to come. You ain't seen nothing yet.' While the centenarian spent his birthday brunch mambo dancing with his 97-year-old sweetheart, Jeanne, and being serenaded by his a cappella-singing granddaughter, he is already looking ahead to how he'll make the most of his milestone year. Advertisement 6 Terens said it was the best day of his life. AP Some of those bucket list items include a 10-day transatlantic trip, where the 'ballet buff' plans to take in the opera in Milan, catch a ballet in Paris, and head to the United Kingdom to hear the London Philharmonic. The lively senior then intends to mark his 103rd birthday with a bar mitzvah ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, next summer – a major achievement he was denied as a child. 'My mother is from Poland and my father is from Russia,' he said. Advertisement 6 He's now looking to the future, where he will celebrate his bar mitzvah at the age of 103. AP 'My mother was religious. My father was anti-religion, and they had two sons and they agreed that my older brother would be bar mitzvahed and then I would not, [to] pacify my father.' Next year's momentous occasion took shape after Terens was speaking on a panel with CNN's Wolf Blitzer and a Pentagon rabbi overheard him mention his lifelong wish to have a bar mitzvah. 'That is definitely on my bucket list and that is truly going to happen,' he joyfully said, noting that 80 of his closest friends and family members have already been added to the guest list. Advertisement 6 Telens and his second wife, Jeanne, who he wed in Normandy last June. AP 'It will be a sensational event. My entire family will be there along with friends. They'll all come. No one will miss that event.' Terens enlisted in 1942 and was sent to Great Britain the following year, serving as a radio repair technician for a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron. All his original pilots died in the war. On D-Day — where more than 150,000 Allied troops invaded five Nazi Germany-occluded beaches in Normandy on June 6, 1944 — he aided in repairing planes coming back from France, with half his company's pilots perishing that day. He has since returned to the fateful spot several times, including in 2024 when he was honored by the French for his service, to mark pivotal anniversaries and to wed his new love. 6 Terens enlisted in 1942 and aided in repairing planes on D-Day. AFP via Getty Images 'It's very emotional every time I go,' said Terens, who plans to return for the 82nd anniversary. 'I have friends there that I long to see and that gives me a great deal of pleasure. But going with the veterans is very, very special. I've had some very memorable moments in Normandy.' Advertisement Terens, who has met five US presidents, including George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, said the secret to his longevity and drive is simple: minimize stress. 6 He plans to return to Normandy for the 82nd anniversary of the historic day of liberation. AFP via Getty Images But reflecting on his long life, the Lake Worth resident considers himself the luckiest man alive. Advertisement 'I think I'm the richest guy in the world and I don't have any money in the bank,' Terens boasted. 'I wouldn't trade my life with anyone in the world no matter who it was. I am happy just who I am and with what I have. I think I have more than anyone else in the world. I am the luckiest guy that God ever created. When I say the best is yet to come, I don't know what it is but it's there. I promise you.'