Homage to Van Gogh

Probably I should entitle this post "Homage to Vincent" since he used his first name to sign his painting of the chair in his room at Arles.  This is my third studio chair painting,  a 20 x 16 oil on multimedia board.  It's also an "as found" painting.  Vincent, you're welcome to come in, take a seat, and rest a while.

Frieze and Van Gogh

This painting is an 18x24 inch oil on canvas of a street view in Bordeaux just after the rain has stopped.  I focused on the frieze of walkers and the parked car.

I've been reading A Power Seething, a wonderful biography of Vincent Van Gogh by Julian Bell.  He writes that in 1885 when Van Gogh was still in Nuenen, he decided to do a series of fifty peasant heads, a project he finished.  Bell goes to say, "Vincent was now overcoming the earlier awkward disjoint between his intentions as a drawer and his instinctual feel for oil paint.  Alone in a quiet nowhere, he was pushing that medium as hard as any of his contemporaries in Europe."  Of course, Bell can write this now because we have a long view backwards, and Van Gogh did go on to paint much greater pictures,  and we know who his contemporaries were.

As I read Bell's book, I constantly thumb through a small Taschen publication of the complete paintings to get a sense of his growth as a painter.  Despite his accomplishment in 1885, if Van Gogh had died then, no one would remember him today.  What is so remarkable is that his greater paintings were done in the last four years, or maybe, the last two years of his life.  The paintings that everyone can identify all belong to the last two years.

Sweetbrook Farm and Deep Van Gogh

A 14x18 oil painting of the Sweetbrook Farm.

I'm trying to catch up on my reading.  The following is from the March 24, 2010 NY Review of Books (yeah, I know...), a review of Van Gogh's letters by Richard Dorment:  "...when you look at his pictures you sense the depth of experience and the breadth of culture behind them.  Lesser artists like Maurice de Vlaminck or Andre Derain imitated Van Gogh's bright colors, thick paint, and expressive brushwork, but all they achieved in their work was surface excitement.  Their art had none of the moral weight and psychological density that in Van Gogh's came from living among the poor, taking the gospels to heart, poring over the works of Shakespeare and many other writers, and studying the history of art."

Sheep Hill Entrance

A 9x12 oil on mdf panel.  It was snowing when I did this painting last week, which is why I made it.

Just finished a book called Real Presences by George Steiner.  He writes, "Mimesis is repossession."

And "What matters is Van Gogh's almost raging insistence that the placing of the pigment, of 'the yellow that is somehow inside the shadow of the blue', is, in the severest observance of the term, a metaphysical act, an encounter with the opaque and precedent authority of essence."

Crazy Tree

8x10 pastel on pastelmat paper.

Vincent died in his brother's arms, but he was a lonely man. The new biography tears down the romantic image of Van Gogh as a misunderstood, persecuted artistic genius, only in that the authors emphasize that his personality was a major factor in how he was treated by the world. He couldn't maintain a relationship with anyone. He would eventually argue with and offend everyone. He easily took offense. He neglected his appearance and his health. The authors even suggest that he didn't die at his own hands, which seems like the last blow to his romantic image.

But the art survived, at least most of it. Vincent was not a facile draughtsman. It's easy to see how his contemporaries thought he was a crude painter if we try to ignore all the art that was created after Van Gogh. Few of his contemporaries had the eyes and temperament to appreciate his art.

Yesterday, I mentioned the Saint-Remy Starry Night at MoMA. Unlike the earlier Arles Starry Night, this painting was done during the day because he was not allowed to leave his room at night. Despite the many obstacles in his life, Van Gogh travelled a great distance in a short number of years.

Late Day Canal

I have been recycling some older, less successful pastels using a combination of pastel and pastel wash. 8x10 on uart paper.

In the Van Gogh book, I am beyond Arles and Saint-Remy with Vincent now on his way to Auvers. The people in Arles treated Van Gogh miserably, though he didn't help much. I visited Arles in June. The hospital where Van Gogh spent many weeks, some of it strapped to his bed, is now a big gift shop specializing in Van Gogh reproductions.

Van Gogh probably had some kind of epilepsy, though his personality disorder seems to go back to when he was a youngster. His father died thinking his oldest son was not normal. His mother blamed him for his father's death. In the last two years of his life he went into periods of blackness losing his mind. When he would come out of these periods he would paint feverishly. In one stretch in 1889 in Saint-Remy, he averaged a painting every other day for eight months, according to the authors.

This weekend I visited MoMA to see the fantastic De Kooning exhibition, which ended today. I also saw Starry Night by Van Gogh. He thought the painting was a failure.

Early in 1890, an art critic named Aurier created a sensation with an article identifying Van Gogh as a great artist, and Vincent sold his first painting. I am near the end of the book. He has six months to live.

Park Road

Back to pastel. 8x10 on Uart paper. Uphill walk.

Van Gogh is now in Arles. Gauguin just arrived. I feel like I am watching a movie. I keep yelling at the main character, "Don't do it. Don't do it." But he can't hear me.

Moonscape Swamp

This is the same moonscape swamp with the thin sheet of ice.

Van Gogh has arrived in Paris. When his brother suggested he come, he was really hoping he wouldn't.

Moonscape and Van Gogh Update

What looks like a desert or moonscape is a barely frozen swamp at Field Farm.

In the Van Gogh biography I have reached 1885. Theo is urging his brother to move to Paris, to take heed of the Impressionists, and to do landscapes. Vincent wants to stay in Holland, thinks the Impressionists are facile and shallow, and wants to do figure paintings in brown and black.

Late December Canals and Van Gogh

Completed today, two views of the same stretch of the canal, the first 12 x 24 in oil, and the top 9x12 in pastel.

Lately, I have been reading the new biography of Van Gogh by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. One reviewer claimed it read like a novel, but if you have held a romantic view of Van Gogh, read his letters and saw the movie Lust for Life as a teenager, then you may find this biography tough going. Not because the book's not well done, but because it may challenge your view of Van Gogh. He must have had a personality disorder of some kind hindering his ability to behave normally. Of course, if he had been a normal person, we would not have the great art that he created in the last four years of his life. He really did suffer enormously. I am only up to year 1881 so far. He was fluent in English and French (self-taught) besides his native Dutch. Multi-lingual people are usually highly-gifted.

Field Off Sloan Road-The Pastel

When I first looked, I thought, well, there's a lot there, but I will have to pull it out.

I have been reading about Cezanne lately. He structured and pulled out a lot from his landscape motifs. Another aspect of Cezanne that struck me is that he lived to be 67, only 67 years of age, even though he looks fragile and ancient in those late photos by Bernard and Roussel. Somebody (Robert Hughes?) wrote that if he had died at the age of fifty, he would be remembered only as a minor artist today, if that. He painted most of his great works in the last 17 years of his life (1889-1906). Another thought: everyone is familiar with Van Gogh. Did you realize that his artistic career lasted only ten years? Ten years.