I was thoroughly impressed by Van Gogh’s work. As I walked around the three floors of the museum with hundreds of eager tourists and locals, I was convinced that this man was not just a talented artist. He was an activist who often took on projects to represent the everyday lives of marginalized people simply by giving them visibility.
Van Gogh, (1853-1890) whose last name is pronounced more like the “h-o” in “hot” than the word “go” once wrote that he had a strong desire to leave “a certain souvenir” to human kind “in the form of drawings or paintings, not made to comply with this or that school but to express genuine human feeling.” And his offering was as qualitative as it was quantitative. He left behind 900 paintings, 1100 drawings and 800 letters. I’ll leave it to Wiki to give you the main details on his journey along the way, but I will give you my impression on a few of his works that particularly moved me.
Most of us are familiar with Van Gogh’s “Irises,” “Starry Night,” or probably his most famous “Sunflowers.” But by the time I got to see the original works I was so flowered and starry-nighted out that I was more interested in discovering his artistry that received less recognition. Below please see the following works: “Self Portrait as an Artist;” “Head of a Woman;” “The Potato Eaters;” “Gauguin’s Chair;” “Almond Blossom” and “The Garden of St. Paul’s Hospital.”
Self Portrait as an Artist
This is my favorite of all of his paintings. It’s obvious that this was a good day for the artist. What you can’t tell in the jpeg is that the color is screaming with happiness. The detail is amazing. His tiny brush strokes are a unique take on pointillism. His hairs are blazing with greens, pinks, yellows and reds. The museum describes this painting as the portrait of an artist ready to claim fame for his excellent works. This really touched me because I know what it is like to take a picture that is a sure-fire winner, the ones that get the honor of being your profile picture on Facebook. If Van Gogh had lived in this time, I have no doubt that this would be the headshot he used for everything. It is also a moving painting because we know that he struggled deeply with his emotions. And this portrait isn’t just a great painting but a symbol of Van Gogh’s victory over his inner demons, if even for just one day.
Head of a Woman
As I am a proud feminist, it was great to see an artist have so many representations of women in his work. I was also happy to learn that many of the women he painted portraits of were either laborers or sex workers. From what I can tell, he never hypersexualized women in his representations of them. I came to appreciate this because the second week of my sexuality course covered extensively how artists of the 19th century and the 20th century went to great lengths to demonize women in sex work as vile, infected individuals. Van Gogh painted them simply as they were: people.
The Potato Eaters
His commitment to representing the common person as well as further developing his craft shines through in “The Potato Eaters.” This is one of Van Gogh’s first portraits of an entire family. Before then he was more committed to giving life to “still life” paintings and individual human faces in portraits. He had visited many laborers and painted this family from memory. This was a family that worked to the flat bone and represented the underbelly of the classes. The title speaks to the fact that the poorest of all people in the 19th century ate potatoes, as they were the cheapest to grow and lasted the longest. In the actual painting, the family’s skin actually looks like the skin of potatoes. Van Gogh once said of the family featured in this painting, “They themselves have dug over the earth with the same hands they are poking in the dish.”
Gauguin’s Chair
Embedded in this painting is the angst experienced in a famous friendship Van Gogh had with the contemporary artist Paul Gauguin. The two argued so passionately about art that Van Gogh was moved to create this painting as a disdainful critique of Gauguin’s work. The books in the chair are meant to signify that Gauguin heavily relied on other works of art to create his own. Another dig Van Gogh took at his friend was that he relied on candlelight instead of natural light to create his masterpieces. It is rumored that Van Gogh eventually sliced off his ear because of this heightened conflict. I like this painting because it shows a completely different side of the artist. It reminded me of the debut of Beyonce’s “Birthday” album amidst rumors of her then boyfriend Jay-Z’s alleged infidelity. This painting like Beyonce’s “Birthday” album was half artistry, half confession. This emotional quality of quarrels with loved ones is unmistakably human.
Almond Blossom
The blue in the original work is like no blue I have ever seen before. It’s not nearly as turquoise as this jpeg foists it off to be. It’s almost like a blue sky flirting with the ocean. Van Gogh was moved to create “Almond Blossom” when his nephew was born. All I could think of while I drooled over this work of art was a Van Gogh-blue dress made just for me.
The Garden of St. Paul’s Hospital
Van Gogh wrote of this painting, “You will fully understand how the combination of red ochre, green […] and black stripes used in the outlines evoke the torment sometimes suffered by certain of my companions in adversity.” Not too long after Van Gogh sliced his ear, he admitted himself into a mental hospital. He was known to spend his days in the garden of the hospital painting. Towards the end of his life, he created several paintings a day, many of them artistic representations of his current state. Some physicians described Van Gogh’s condition as epilepsy, by others as bipolar disorder. I was so taken by his commitment to empathize with others, even in suffering. He had this ability to transform negative to positive. In the end, I think this message of resiliency, of transcendence is what he tried so earnestly to convey to humanity in his paintings, these certain souvenirs.
I must give a hat tip to Wikimedia for providing most of these pictures with a happy message that the copyright had expired and that these were free to use for the general public. Additionally, I must offer a disclaimer that these representations are a glimpse of his original work for purposes of explication only.
Thanks for reading. You can donate to RoseGoestoAmsterdam here.
1 comment:
What a wonderful entry, Rose. Full of self introspection.... Thanks for humanizing Van Gogh. I think many of us forget that he was not only a gifted artist but a human being who also had his own demons.
I only wish I could have seen the blue sky in the almond tree painting. I bet it was beautiful.
Post a Comment