Tahiti Was Good For Gauguin

The Moment of Truth (I), 1892

o/c, 54.5 cm x 31 cm

Paul Gauguin

Cincinnati Art Museum

I wish I was born in the nineteenth century.  Maybe I'd have taken a long Tahitian retreat, like Gauguin, or Matisse. Actor Marlon Brando figured the same.

Palettes as History

Vincent van Gogh

Paul Gauguin

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/lucydavies/100007607/why-preserve-van-goghs-palette/

Generosity

Self Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin
o/c, 1888
van Gogh

Early in my career as an artist I was advised to never give away my art. The idea is to establish your value, and often people who get something for nothing hold that something to its ticket price.

Maybe one model for the uncertain economic times we are living in will be for the (established) artist to now, sometimes, gift his art. The goodwill can't hurt, and there is that old word: exposure. My own path has been to donate at least one work per year to organizations.

An artist can also give time, expertise and labor.

One of the great examples of generosity in art history can be found in the life of Vincent van Gogh. He loved humankind, and really created his inimitable body of works for our enjoyment.

Here are musicians Chet Atkins and Don McLain performing Vincent, which is about VVG's unselfish love. Find the words to the song here.

The youth here may not remember this song, but those of us in the 50 plus category will now go for a tissue...





“I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people,” Vincent van Gogh.

Content, Subject and Modern Art

Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers, 1888, 93 x 73cm. Vincent van Gogh.

I find much of my Yellow House book very interesting. I am happy to know, for some reason, what I will find if I follow the stairs down from the famous bedroom, and enter the little studio in the front. Will I exit the house, turn right and buy some vegetables at the grocery next door? Or, will I turn left, left again at the corner and walk the few hundred yards to the railway trestle? I will spare you the sordid details of what I pass on the left before I get to the railway!

But, I find it tedious to know what people think are the symbols behind the subjects of our artists' works. If VVG wrote the meanings in a letter to Theo, fine - then that is the meaning.

Otherwise, I am more interested in the formal elements of these wonderful paintings. Look at the yellow on yellow color composition! The palette knife impastos of paint upon paint! VVG said that he chose color as his motive in art, and that is a big clue.

Now, we descend into the darker times of van Gogh's days in Arles with Gauguin. Will I be able to face the dementia that poor VVG exhibited, and that Paul Gauguin tolerated only for so long? What will it say to me? Will we discover a key to his genius, or will we simply "cross the street" to avoid the old boy?

Stay tuned, art fans. Same van Gogh channel; same van Gogh time...

Lust for Life

I can't read my great book, The Yellow House..., without picturing Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn as van Gogh and Gauguin.

More's the shame, as I thought the 1956 movie, Lust for Life, (Vincente Minnelli, director) had some problems that I just can't get over.



This movie critic disagrees:

"Lust for Life is appropriately titled, for mere passion seems inadequate when describing this superb fictionalized biography (based on Irving Stone's popular novel) of Vincent Van Gogh. In a deservedly Oscar®- nominated performance, Kirk Douglas is physically and emotionally perfect...(He describes this movie as) this blessed project, which centers on Van Gogh's stormy friendship with fellow artist Gauguin (Oscar-winner Anthony Quinn). Minnelli used an outmoded color film process and innovative camera techniques to vividly recreate Van Gogh's paintings, and he filmed on the actual Dutch and French locations where Van Gogh's mastery flourished. The artist's lust for life also fed his madness, and this film deeply understands the fine line in between." --Jeff Shannon

Before I rant on, I will admit that I liked the movie just fine. Take Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin. Not bad casting, since Gauguin cast himself as a man's man, a Breton sailor-type, who had actually served as a French Naval officer. Quinn was a big man, too. Turns out that AQ was a painter and a sculptor, which is an eerie parallel to PG, who painted and sculpted.

Compare for yourself:

My problem is with Kirk Douglas being cast as VVG. Come on! Kirk Douglas is also a man's man, big and virile, even in his current and elderly condition of being crippled by a stroke. The handsome Kirk Douglas is nothing like the diminutive, stinky and ugly wretch of a man, Vincent van Gogh.

You decide:




Similarities between Kirk and Vincent: KD born in Amsterdam, NY. VVG born in Holland. Both have sorta reddish hair. That's all I've got!

Note: I don't really believe the photo above is van Gogh, but it's close enough for the fun we're having here.

External Evidence of van Gogh's Appearance

Vincent in Conversation with Felix Feneon, Paris 1888. Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944).



Here is a photo of a street scene in Paris showing Emile Bernard facing, and the famous keener's back to us. Darn!


This is very fresh, given our subject of the collaboration in the Yellow House:
Vincent at the easel, Paul Gauguin, 1888.

Toulouse-Lautrec de Henri has given us this very nice drawing of van Gogh. Ritratto di Vincent van Gogh, 1887. It shares, I think, the same pigments VVG used in his self portrait shown in my last post. It is also a pastel, which Lautrec was known to have used.

Paul Gauguin's Vision of the Sermon

Vision of the Sermon, Gauguin 1888

This painting, of Breton women observing
Jacob wrestling the angel, was one of the works that fed the collaboration at the yellow house.

The flat plane of red, with figures sort of floating about, the use of pure colors, and the use of imagination are breakthroughs evidenced in this work, and others from this time.

Van Gogh and Gauguin, and also Emile Bernard by postal connections, were creating one the greatest "synergies" of artistic change in history at this "Studio of the South". Read some interesting history (The Art Institute of Chicago) and criticism (author not named, Telegraph U.K.) here and here.


Arles, France residence of Gauguin and van Gogh

What is the Correct Tone of the Mountains?

Starry Night, van Gogh, 1889
"That is a little what Bernard and Gauguin feel, they do not ask the correct shape of a tree at all, but they insist absolutely that one can say if the shape is round or square - and my word, they are right, exasperated as they are by certain people's photographic and empty perfection.

Certainly they will not ask the correct tone of the mountains, but they will say: In the Name of God, the mountains were blue, were they? Then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue rather like this or that, it was blue, wasn't it? Good - make them blue and it's enough!

Gauguin is sometimes like a genius when he explains this, but as for the genius Gauguin has, he is very timid about showing it, and it is touching the way he likes to say something really useful to the young. How strange he is all the same."

van Gogh, 1889

Postscript: One has to like Emile Bernard, who got kicked out of art school in Paris for insubordination!

Bump! Originality

Gauguin at His Easel, 1885
Self Portrait

There is a good conversation going on my previous post about originality.
In my "Yellow House" book, on Gauguin and VVG, the author is calling the style of Cezanne the "default" style of Gauguin.
Ouch!

The Yellow House, Van Gogh and Gauguin

Garden in the Snow, 1885

My book arrived yesterday from Amazon. It is The Yellow House, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent weeks in Arles, by Martin Gayford.

It is a funny thing, too. I enjoyed trying to write something original about the artist Bob Dylan, and giving my own opinions achieves that, I think. As a result, I was searching for someone else to write about, this time a visual artist. Van Gogh came to mind, and I had posted these "originality" posts, and here comes my book in the mail. Synchronicity.

The book treats you to every detail of the situation involving a moment and a place in time. An event that informs western art forever. What was their arrangement? What would you find if you turned left out the front door of the yellow house, and went one door? One mile?

What did VVG eat for breakfast? (Coffee, bread and butter)

If this kind of minutia drives you crazy, wait til we get to Van Gogh's unraveling! Don't worry, I shall treat you, dear reader, to just the salient points.

Well, maybe a few trivialities, just for spice.

Here's one I found entertaining. Ever wonder how to pronounce Van Gogh? If you aren't Dutch, just forget it. On that, I was in Italy last year, bumping along a high road with my host, a Dutchman named Lorenzo. Of course, I asked him to pronounce "Van Gogh". Go here to hear it for yourself.

I just poured myself a cup of French press coffee. VVG was addicted to the stuff. Not me, though. I can quit any time I like. I just don't feel like quiting...

Back to my book, now.

Van Gogh and Gauguin

Bump!
I decided to revisit this VG portrait, because of the similarity to the portrait that his roomie did. Also, recall this from a previous post.

Portrait of the postman
Joseph Roulin,
Vincent Van Gogh.
1888, o/c 65 x54 cm.

Van Gogh News

Check out this item over at Artdaily. Guess I have company in my love for the Dutch artist's work.

What is Originality?

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."
Paul Gauguin

The Yellow House (in Arles)

Can you say,
"synergy"?

Quote:

“Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent... When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?”

Gauguin (re: Van Gogh)
1848-1903

http://www.amazon.com/

Yellow-House-Gauguin-Turbulent-Weeks/dp/0316769010