25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Kiefer/Van Gogh at Royal Academy: 'lust for life in the face of death'
It leads you into the next room which dwells more on the journey of Kiefer along the trail on Van Gogh. It includes drawings from his travels — there is also an excellent little booklet with excerpts from his youthful fan-boy diary, sample quote: 'I don't want to copy Van Gogh's style. That would be too primitive. I'd rather find my own language. But that's very hard to do' — but these tend to pale beside Van Gogh's work here, including his own drawings of the land which can't have changed too much by Kiefer's time. Avenue of Poplars, a pencil and ink piece from 1884, is breathtaking in its image of a figure stopped in the long stretch of trees, waiting or unable to go on, for reasons best not asked.
