Dear Fellow Art Lovers,
October drifts toward winter, releasing the last warmth of summer. Conkers and walnuts slip steadily from the trees, each landing with a soft thunk, while rich red apples cling stubbornly to their branches, gradually revealed by the cascade of golden autumn leaves. The air carries the crisp, sweet scent of drying foliage, and at night, the distant calls of owls send delicious shivers of mystery through the dark, as if we were actors in a perfectly scripted film.
Amid these autumnal vignettes, my thoughts turn to the sunflower—regal and sturdy, a sentinel of the seasons witnessing the quiet transition from summer to autumn—perfectly embodied in the works on view at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where the exhibition “Van Gogh and Kiefer: Line, Shape, and Memory” invites viewers to explore the dialogue between Vincent van Gogh and Anselm Kiefer. What captivated me, and drew me to consider these works for audio description, is their materiality. Both artists use their medium with remarkable presence: van Gogh sculpts colour and texture with every brushstroke, while Kiefer shapes meaning through dense layers of paint, ash, and natural materials. Each stroke, each layer, becomes a gesture—weighty, expressive, alive.
For this newsletter, I have selected two works to explore in audio description: first, van Gogh’s “Sunflowers Gone to Seed”, and then Kiefer’s “Die Orden der Nacht” (“The Orders of the Night”). Both share a preoccupation with transformation and the passage of time: the sunflower, once upright and vibrant, slowly bends toward its next season, its radiance fading into the dark centre where new life waits, dormant yet inevitable.
In 1887, van Gogh was living in Paris with his brother Theo, in a modest apartment. At this time Paris was alive with the energy of the city and the new artistic ideas flowing from the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists. The sunflower captivated Van Gogh for its vivid colour, its resilience, and its symbolism—a perfect subject to explore both the cycles of life and the expressive potential of paint. The sunflower is more than a flower here; it is a witness to growth, decline, and renewal.
Imagine a small canvas, approximately the size of an A4 sheet of paper turned on its side in landscape format, alive with texture and subtle motion. At its centre, a sunflower stands upright, heavy with seeds, its thick stem extending beyond the left edge of the canvas, anchoring it firmly in space. Behind it, a second sunflower lies face down, resting, its arching stem curving gracefully to the right. The composition forms a gentle diagonal from lower left to upper right, guiding the eye naturally across the painting.
Van Gogh’s brushstrokes pulse with life: horizontal and slightly diagonal green strokes sweep across the background like blades of grass in motion, while short, energetic bursts of yellow, rust, and olive create rhythm on the petals. Soft touches of aqua nestle beneath some petals, barely perceptible, hinting at shadow and depth. The larger sunflower draws the eye first, its textured petals curling and folding, leading to the dense, dark centre where thin vertical strokes reveal the seeds. Between the flowers, darker greens and blacks form a quiet shadow, carrying the gaze to the reclining sunflower, whose underside petals catch this delicate, cool light. Three horizontal and diagonal strokes beneath the larger flower suggest fallen stems, grounding the scene and inviting reflection.
The background’s lively green, flecked with lighter and darker tones, suggests movement and life, while patches of speckled tan along the edges contain the energy without confining it. Every stroke seems to breathe, guiding the eye from the upright flower to the reclining one, through shadows and stems, back to the waining, textured petals.
In this somber yet tender meditation, van Gogh captures more than just the physical form of flowers. He paints the passage of time, the cycle of life, and the beauty of impermanence. These sunflowers, though wilting, vibrate with vitality, carrying the memory of bloom and warmth. They are as much about resilience and hope as they are about decay—echoes of van Gogh’s own life at the time, full of intensity, exploration, and the search for meaning in both colour and existence.
Where van Gogh’s sunflowers burn with the last light of day—golden, tactile, and trembling with remnants of vitality—Kiefer’s exist in the hours after sunset. His are the sunflowers of memory, their heads bowed beneath the weight of night. Both artists, in their own way, search for transcendence: van Gogh through radiance and becoming, Kiefer through endurance and decay.
Anselm Kiefer’s “Die Orden der Nacht” stands as both a lament and a hymn—a meditation on cosmic order and human frailty. Painted in 1996, this vast canvas, more than eleven feet high and fifteen feet wide, envelops the viewer in its solemn landscape. Kiefer’s materials—acrylic, emulsion, and shellac—form a dense, tactile surface layered like sediment, as though time itself has settled upon the painting.
Though the title does not appear verbatim in the Book of Job, the meditation behind the painting is inspired by God’s dialogue with Job, asking, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the cords of Orion?” Kiefer translates this cosmic questioning into matter: cracked earth, fallen sunflowers, and a solitary human figure lying beneath the vastness of night. The seven sunflowers loosely represent the Pleiades, the cluster of seven stars visible to the naked eye.
At the bottom centre lies a man, supine, his bare chest pale as dust, arms resting at his sides, feet uncovered, face turned toward the heavens. A thin, white snake with black spots winds across his chest—an emblem of renewal, death, and wisdom. Rising above him are seven colossal sunflowers, their thick stalks and blackened, drooping heads towering like sentinels. Petals are mostly gone, indicated by black lines with cream highlights, their weight heavy with seed. Behind and between them, faint traces of smaller sunflowers dissolve into the distance, creating the sense of an infinite field stretching into the night.
The sky above moves from pale cream at the left edge to deeper greys and ochres toward the right, as if dusk is giving way to full night. Short, dappled strokes of white and very light, pale-grey paint paint shine creating the illusion of moonlight. Or, perhaps, the light in the painting hints not only at the quiet of night but at the coming of dawn, echoing Job 38:12–14, where God speaks of commanding the morning and assigning the dawn its place—a reminder that even within darkness, order and renewal are set in motion. The cracked earth below is thick with texture, scorched and ancient, like the skin of the world itself. There is no horizon line; instead, ground and sky merge, leaving the figure suspended between earth and eternity.
Unlike van Gogh’s oils, Kiefer’s acrylics and emulsions absorb light, holding it in silence. This sacred stillness invites contemplation: suffering is not punishment but part of a greater order, a mystery binding humanity to the cosmos. The sunflowers, so central to van Gogh’s joy, have here turned to ash and night. Yet they retain the same cosmic yearning—their seeds waiting beneath decay. Kiefer’s work breathes with the gravity of time, an earthly echo of van Gogh’s vibrant radiance.
Both artists gaze upward through the same metaphor: the sunflower as a mirror of the human soul. Van Gogh found in it a vessel for hope, for the brilliance of being alive; Kiefer, a monument to faith that persists even in darkness. Together, they form a dialogue across a century: two visions of the eternal cycle—one radiant, one somber—both seeking the divine in the fragile matter of the world.
Kiefer’s Life and Context
Born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, Kiefer entered the world amidst the ruins of war. Growing up in the Black Forest region, he experienced a landscape marked by both natural beauty and historical scars. This proximity to the aftermath of World War II profoundly influenced his vision. His work explores memory, trauma, and German identity, drawing inspiration from the poet Paul Celan and engaging with spiritual traditions such as the Kabbalah. Kiefer’s art meditates on history’s weight and the search for meaning in a fractured world.
At the Royal Academy of Arts, the exhibition juxtaposes Kiefer’s monumental works with van Gogh’s emotive paintings. Among other works on display is Kiefer’s reinterpretation of van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows’, where the vibrant energy of van Gogh’s original is transformed into a haunting reflection on loss and despair. This exhibition invites reflection on the enduring impact of history and the human impulse to find order and transcendence in art.
Closing Reflection
So we return to October, a time for reflection, when quiet settles like a soft veil. Dusk bends the light, and the air carries the subtle warmth of a season slowly fading. The sunflowers—van Gogh’s luminous blooms and Kiefer’s shadowed sentinels—linger in thought, bearing witness to the cycles of life, death, and renewal. In this autumnal stillness, the works echo the enduring rhythms of the natural world, inviting contemplation on our fragile place within the vast, patient order of existence.
Further Exploration
Royal Academy of Arts – Van Gogh and Kiefer Exhibition: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/kiefer-van-gogh
Van Gogh Museum – Paris Period & Sunflowers: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0035V1962
Britannica– Anselm Kiefer: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anselm-Kiefer
Warmest regards,
Lisa and Aurora
P.S. Aurora feels her thoughts have been sorely neglected in this letter, and as it is her birthday month — she turns one this week — I close with two pictures of her: the curious puppy from ten months ago and the joyful young dog now, bounding along the beach with her friends. She lives entirely in the present, blissfully untouched by questions of art, mortality, or meaning. While we ponder beauty and impermanence, she simply runs, nose to the wind — a reminder that joy itself can be its own philosophy.
