Vincent van Gogh: A Journey

Out of the blue one day recently I got an email from Taschen Books about a sale they were having. Luckily for them, they featured a photo of a book about Vincent van Gogh they were having a sale on. Even at $50.00 it seemed a bargain as it would include ALL of his works, sketches, pen and inks and every painting he ever made. Of course, I bought it.

When it arrived I realized that it was huge. Over 750 pages not including index and oversized pages. As I started to read it though, I was struck by facts that I did not know and I already had a number of books about him, including his letters. I glanced through the letters but never sat down to read them.

I knew he was the second son born with the name Vincent but did not know he was born on the same day as his brother's stillborn death. There was a small cemetery in front of the vicarage house he grew up in and each day he could see his name sake's headstone.

His was a tortured journey that we have all heard about. But seeing all, not some of his paintings showed his slow but steady development as an artist. None of his work in Holland and with the miners in Belgium showed the brilliance that was to come. The authors of this book call his THE POTATO EATERS his first masterpiece but also note that it is a set piece, each face has been posed and that it was not truly an actual scene. Yet, in its own way, captured the essence of their lives.

My introduction to Vincent was as a 5th-6th Grader taking art classes at the Portland Art Museum. My

Blossoms: Almond Tree In Bloom

father was naturally gifted and watching my doodles decided that I needed some training. For some reason the van Gogh collection was at the museum on a world tour as they were building a new museum dedicated to his art in Amsterdamn. So every Saturday I would walk past this vast collection as I went to art class. Often I would have to wait for my father who was the manager of the Schick Electric Shaver Shop in Portland, OR. He had to work half day Saturday's. I would wander the gallery and look at each painting. My favorite of all was Blossoms: Almond Tree in Bloom. When I finally saw the "second" new museum I was surprised to find this image prominently displayed on everything ... scarves, notebooks, coffee cups. It was like visiting a long lost friend. Then when my friend in lockdown in China showed me a picture he hung from his purchases in Shenzhen, China, I was stunned to see it was a faithful copy of BLOSSOMS he bought there. Our tastes were more alike than I realized.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art had a show a few years back on Expressionism. The first painting you saw, one the curator worked five years to get and use, was a van Gogh painting. She felt that he represented the beginning of a movement of artists who went beyond the Impressionists and created what was called Expressionism. She had a point.

It is clear that when Vincent went to Paris his painting palette changed but his style became more forceful, more distinct. Yes, he dallied with Signac and Seurat's Pointillism, and some of Cezanne's increasing abstract's. He was enamored with Japanese wood block prints, even organizing a show of them, but all in all he was faithful to his own style. There was no one painting as he did.

The world's second most recognized painting, behind Leonardo's MONA LISA,  is Vincent's STARRY NIGHT that now resides at MOMA in New York City. While I think it belongs in Amsterdam, we are lucky that we need only go to New York City to see one of man's most recognizable masterpieces. I read somewhere that astronomers say he even has the stars right the night it was painted. The painting is not huge, like say Seurat's SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE GRAND JATTE, but to stand in front of it you find yourself drawn into the swirls, even floating above the town in blue and yellow splendor.

THE RED VINEYARD by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent is famous for only selling one of his 1,000 plus drawing, etchings and paintings. THE RED VINEYARD was sold for 5 Francs that he soon gave away. He was aware that in death his paintings could become more valuable. Millet, an early mentor, had died and he watched his paintings that could be purchased for a pittance suddenly fetch amazing sums. Dependent on Theo, his art dealing brother who financed his career from his own income and from the inheritance he received from his father who cut Vincent completely out of the will, van Gogh wrote and talked about the fame of artists after they died.

He was forever grateful to Theo who in fact had most of the paintings stored in a warehouse and would now and then enter them into show competitions. The first two paintings that were ever shown were THE POTATO EATERS and IRISES that is now in the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

IRISES by Vincent van Gogh

I have a funny story about that painting and was surprised to learn it was one of the first paintings he would show to the world. The Getty bought the IRISES for $56 million long before the Getty Center was built. It was, at the time the most any painting had ever fetched at an auction. The now Getty Villa in Malibu was the first museum built with Getty's oil money. His house was torn down and an accurate copy of a Roman villa, patterned after a real villa in Herculeum was built. It caused a storm when it opened but was soon accepted for what it was.

 My family and I went out to see IRISES but we could not locate it anywhere. It was the first such painting the Getty had ever bought and looking back, there was really no room to hang it in. Finally giving up my kids found the new media room with Wi-Fi and 20-30 computers all hooked up. My 10 or so year old son immediately latched on to one and my daughter and I looked around the room. I spotted a painting at the end of the room almost in total darkness and walking towards it realized here was the van Gogh. The woman in charge came up and asked me if I knew what it was. Speechless I just nodded. Getting closer she turned on the lights and I probably gasped. Looking at it I said, "I certainly have a better place to hang it than here!" "Where?," she asked. "My living room over my fireplace." After a good laugh she explained the dilemma they were having on hanging it. It was then and remains today one of my favorite paintings.

Vincent knew many of what are now famous Impressioinists of the day and lived for a short time with Gauguin. They were too different in style and temperament. He learned from and somewhat copied all their styles yet never let his own go. He was aware of own style and was liked by his fellow painters.

The mental breakdowns hit him hard and yet during his time in St. Remy and outside of Paris, in Arles, where he died, he produced some of his greatest masterpieces. Painting usually outdoors there is an amazing video on YouTube where they have found bugs, always a constant threat, buried deep in his paint. After he came back to the north of Paris, just before he died, he painted 80 paintings in 60 days. Many are considered some of his finest masterpieces.

WHEAT FIELD WITH CROWS by Vincent van Gogh

While we may never know for sure, many believe this was his last painting. To me it represents a direction that he was moving, moving to abstract expressionism something that he didn't understand and yet moved towards it with each painting. While there is no doubt there was an element of insanity in his death, his new doctor in Arles, Paul Gachet was experienced with patients like Vincent. That he didn't see anything alarming in the behavior just before the fatal shot on July 27, 1890, something happened to put that bullet in his stomach, and his refusal of medical care that led to his death two days later.

Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and he and many others considered himself a failure. He only became famous after his suicide, something that he felt would happen and soon was seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination. His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. Germany  missed the Impressionist period completely and quickly artists changed from the salon style painting favored in France as well as Germany to a vibrant form of Expressionism. The German art world moved from staid Dresden to growing, libertine capital Berlin and it was there that Vincent's art was shown, admired and started a movement.

There Vincent first attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Is every derided, ridiculed, criticized artist another genius? We can never know. But, unless we try and continue to improve our craft we may never know with our own art. If you were, even today, to compare Vincent's work to what the French, the British and German Salons were exhibiting, they would probably be considered the scribblings of children. Some today might make the same comparison. Does the majority of the art world we see them that way today? No.They are visions of the world without restraint and for many, that is enough!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed!

 

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!