I have been a Vincent Van Gogh aficionado since childhood. He is one of those Haptic artists who paint from the mind and from instinct and emotion, not from what they see. Haptic artists are not visually motivated--they paint from the viscera, from the gut, if you will (a give-away for haptic artists is their propensity for painting their subjects' hair strand by strand). They are mostly northerners--Scandinavians--and are therefore not blessed with inspiring scenery. They conjure the images they paint from their minds.
Van Gogh's brushstrokes on his paintings have a hypnotic effect on the beholder. I started oil painting when I was nine years old, immediately after I first saw a Van Gogh painting, and stopped at 24. I was 22 when I first came upon an original at the Louvre and was completely mesmerized; it was a religious experience! I immediately asked one of the custodians when I got there, "Where can I find Van Gow's paintings?" To which he answered, "Oh, you must mean the Van Gokkkrrrfffs." Eeoow, excuse me, I thought to myself, because he sounded like he had a huge fur ball stuck in his throat and was coaxing it out with that hacking, guttural sound.
I remember spending six hours at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam taking in Van Goghs and Rembrandts and another 4 hours at the Van Gogh Museum also in Amsterdam. I couldn't extricate myself from there.
It's simply amazing to see such sublime work come out of such a tormented being. Van Gogh produced so much beauty from all the ugliness and the pain inside him. His life must have been so sad...so profoundly sad. But look at what he had left for all the world to behold.
When you look at his paintings notice the color and texture, which were his chief symbols of expression. During his brief career he had sold only one painting. The works of his early Dutch period were darker and more somber-toned. These were more disturbing and I love them because of their capacity to portray stark reality: poverty and desolateness.
It was his move to Paris that brought the burst of energy, emotion, and color in his paintings. His finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brush and palette knife strokes, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. This is also the period wherein he cut his ear after the collapse of his friendship with Gaugin. Van Gogh's fusion of form and content is powerful, dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional. Experts say that he was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature. I don't think it was that complicated. I simply believe that painting was his way of coping.
Van Gogh's brushstrokes on his paintings have a hypnotic effect on the beholder. I started oil painting when I was nine years old, immediately after I first saw a Van Gogh painting, and stopped at 24. I was 22 when I first came upon an original at the Louvre and was completely mesmerized; it was a religious experience! I immediately asked one of the custodians when I got there, "Where can I find Van Gow's paintings?" To which he answered, "Oh, you must mean the Van Gokkkrrrfffs." Eeoow, excuse me, I thought to myself, because he sounded like he had a huge fur ball stuck in his throat and was coaxing it out with that hacking, guttural sound.
I remember spending six hours at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam taking in Van Goghs and Rembrandts and another 4 hours at the Van Gogh Museum also in Amsterdam. I couldn't extricate myself from there.
It's simply amazing to see such sublime work come out of such a tormented being. Van Gogh produced so much beauty from all the ugliness and the pain inside him. His life must have been so sad...so profoundly sad. But look at what he had left for all the world to behold.
When you look at his paintings notice the color and texture, which were his chief symbols of expression. During his brief career he had sold only one painting. The works of his early Dutch period were darker and more somber-toned. These were more disturbing and I love them because of their capacity to portray stark reality: poverty and desolateness.
It was his move to Paris that brought the burst of energy, emotion, and color in his paintings. His finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brush and palette knife strokes, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. This is also the period wherein he cut his ear after the collapse of his friendship with Gaugin. Van Gogh's fusion of form and content is powerful, dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional. Experts say that he was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature. I don't think it was that complicated. I simply believe that painting was his way of coping.
"Of my own work I think that the picture of peasants eating potatoes I did in Nuenen is après tout the best I've done. But since then I've had no chance of getting models, though on the other hand I did have the chance to study the colour question. And if I should find models again for my figures later, then I would hope to be able to show that I am after something other than little green landscapes or flowers.”
Vincent Van Gogh, 1887
A kind reader of my Fortyfied column sent this link. It is very difficult not to be moved by this video. Please watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
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