Remarks from the Fray:
Vincent Van Gogh was sui generis. A movement unto himself. Of all the great Masters, he had arguably the least influence on other artists (save for his legendary life, which as Picasso remarked was the Passion of Christ for painters). Among his fellow post-Impressionists, Cezanne had a million imitators, so did Monet, Gauguin, Seurat, but no one ever painted like Van Gogh, before or since. He painted at a pitch that was so high and burned so bright that you couldn't replicate his style if you tried.
What might have seemed peaceful to Van Gogh still comes across as pretty charged to the rest of us. The author says "surely nothing could be less hostile than Field With Flowers Near Arles"; well, I'm not so sure. Take a look at that sky. It was painted with a knife in big slashing strokes. That's a key thing about Van Gogh---he usually paints with a knife, and not the softer, fuzzier brush. He is poking, stabbing, slashing, carving, very fast but always in rhythm. His knifework exudes energy---just like that bright yellow field, or the perspective lines zigzagging deep into the picture plane. It is both exuberant in spirit and a little threatening. What makes the display even more remarkable is that Vincent had to beg his brother Theo for every drop of paint he used, and yet here he is, trowling it on undiluted from the tube, a slave to his muses.
The Expressionists picked up on the slashing brushwork and the bright colors, but they used them more for effect than as something welling up from deep within the soul. They got the sizzle but not the steak. For instance, the Schmidt-Rotluff self-portrait is a pretty picture, but if you look at it closely, you can tell that he used a photo for reference, then jazzed it up with bright colors and a palette knife. Van Gogh's self-portraits are the genuine article, an unmediated look into the mind of an isolated, destitute, despised, alcoholic, manic, occasionally psychotic genius.
--Utek1
(To reply, click here.)
I can't shake the impression that those who refer to Van Gogh in the terms of his letters prose—which describe and indicate what he sought artistically e.g. peace, the tranquility of nature, the 'goodness of Millet' etc.—haven't really looked at his paintings. The most tranquil rural scene is always, for me, rendered as an expression of pure buzzing energy. They figuratively hum off the canvas.
Van Gogh's letters indicate what he sought. But as so often occurs in the work of the truly 'totemic' artists (rare birds indeed) their work is what happens on the way to an imagined platonic ideal. But the human gets in the way. And the work finds its own ideal. Often quite scary. But identifiable by its wierd energy.
This I think is where the Expressionists found their foothold. And to quote the author, quoting VVG-
"To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones," this was Van Gogh's ecstatic aim circa 1888. "To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a somber background; to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance"
This seems to be as clear a description of the expressionistic impulse as any I've read recently.
I don't think they misunderstood him. It is just that there will always be only one VVG, they just reacted to the impulse behind the painting themselves and disregarded what VVG wrote or said about them. It's in the paint and nowhere else.
The poet often is the least able to describe his work.
--LoneRhino
(To reply, click here.)
I am always drawn to the boldness of his pallet, the quick certainty of his pallet knife and the sweeping curvature of his composition. To Vincent, nothing was straight in his life or in his art. There certainly were edges, but they were always moving around something, or going in a direction to avoid confrontation.
Evidently he saw life as the moving flow that is in all of his work and the contrasts that I always think of when I think about what he accomplished as an artist. Vincent shows us time after time, that the darkest of darks always exist beside the lightest of lights and the most beautiful things often exist in the most humble of places. That was true in his life and in much of his work.
I guess that is what the art of a painter is, moving the world from what one sees and experiences to the canvas. I can not do it, but God did give me the ability to admire it. For that I am grateful.
Many have attempted to examine this man, who defies examination and I guess I did, too. Having failed in my attempt, I will end with my opinion that everything this man did as an artist pleases me. In a world where I am expected to admire things that do not please, I will always prefer Vincent.
--meridiantoo
(To reply, click here.)
(4/8)
Click here to read a slide-show essay about how the Expressionist painters re-imagined Van Gogh's life and art.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Vincent Van Gogh was sui generis. A movement unto himself. Of all the great Masters, he had arguably the least influence on other artists (save for his legendary life, which as Picasso remarked was the Passion of Christ for painters). Among his fellow post-Impressionists, Cezanne had a million imitators, so did Monet, Gauguin, Seurat, but no one ever painted like Van Gogh, before or since. He painted at a pitch that was so high and burned so bright that you couldn't replicate his style if you tried.
What might have seemed peaceful to Van Gogh still comes across as pretty charged to the rest of us. The author says "surely nothing could be less hostile than Field With Flowers Near Arles"; well, I'm not so sure. Take a look at that sky. It was painted with a knife in big slashing strokes. That's a key thing about Van Gogh---he usually paints with a knife, and not the softer, fuzzier brush. He is poking, stabbing, slashing, carving, very fast but always in rhythm. His knifework exudes energy---just like that bright yellow field, or the perspective lines zigzagging deep into the picture plane. It is both exuberant in spirit and a little threatening. What makes the display even more remarkable is that Vincent had to beg his brother Theo for every drop of paint he used, and yet here he is, trowling it on undiluted from the tube, a slave to his muses.
The Expressionists picked up on the slashing brushwork and the bright colors, but they used them more for effect than as something welling up from deep within the soul. They got the sizzle but not the steak. For instance, the Schmidt-Rotluff self-portrait is a pretty picture, but if you look at it closely, you can tell that he used a photo for reference, then jazzed it up with bright colors and a palette knife. Van Gogh's self-portraits are the genuine article, an unmediated look into the mind of an isolated, destitute, despised, alcoholic, manic, occasionally psychotic genius.
--Utek1
(To reply, click here.)
I can't shake the impression that those who refer to Van Gogh in the terms of his letters prose—which describe and indicate what he sought artistically e.g. peace, the tranquility of nature, the 'goodness of Millet' etc.—haven't really looked at his paintings. The most tranquil rural scene is always, for me, rendered as an expression of pure buzzing energy. They figuratively hum off the canvas.
Van Gogh's letters indicate what he sought. But as so often occurs in the work of the truly 'totemic' artists (rare birds indeed) their work is what happens on the way to an imagined platonic ideal. But the human gets in the way. And the work finds its own ideal. Often quite scary. But identifiable by its wierd energy.
This I think is where the Expressionists found their foothold. And to quote the author, quoting VVG-
"To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones," this was Van Gogh's ecstatic aim circa 1888. "To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a somber background; to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance"
This seems to be as clear a description of the expressionistic impulse as any I've read recently.
I don't think they misunderstood him. It is just that there will always be only one VVG, they just reacted to the impulse behind the painting themselves and disregarded what VVG wrote or said about them. It's in the paint and nowhere else.
The poet often is the least able to describe his work.
--LoneRhino
(To reply, click here.)
I am always drawn to the boldness of his pallet, the quick certainty of his pallet knife and the sweeping curvature of his composition. To Vincent, nothing was straight in his life or in his art. There certainly were edges, but they were always moving around something, or going in a direction to avoid confrontation.
Evidently he saw life as the moving flow that is in all of his work and the contrasts that I always think of when I think about what he accomplished as an artist. Vincent shows us time after time, that the darkest of darks always exist beside the lightest of lights and the most beautiful things often exist in the most humble of places. That was true in his life and in much of his work.
I guess that is what the art of a painter is, moving the world from what one sees and experiences to the canvas. I can not do it, but God did give me the ability to admire it. For that I am grateful.
Many have attempted to examine this man, who defies examination and I guess I did, too. Having failed in my attempt, I will end with my opinion that everything this man did as an artist pleases me. In a world where I am expected to admire things that do not please, I will always prefer Vincent.
--meridiantoo
(To reply, click here.)
(4/8)