We Share a "Lust For Life"!

Things are getting ugly fast at our little French Cafe. In my worst French, I yell for another: "Guinness, fille!"
Icy stares from waitresses are my only reception.
I would crawl under the table, except that is where van Gogh is. And the fish on his breath is too much for even my iron constitution.
"I think it's time that we beat a hasty retreat, Vincent. If we crawl towards the door, we may get out unharmed!"
"Yes, let's get back to the studio. We can sober up there and try to get some work done on this VG Project of yours..."

Yellow and Blue

Yellow Trees in a Blue Forest, 9" x 7"
Original Pastel
$450.00
Casey Klahn

Here is one of my pastels from the Colorist American Landscapes collection. It occurred to me that there was no bluer blue on Earth than the Sennelier blues that went into this favorite work. And, given the inherent lack of intensity in the yellows available to me, I was gratified by the solution that I arrived at for the yellows here.
I will add that after a year or so of dissatisfaction with the French Sennelier pastels, I had a re-awakening to their color quality. They are very pure and good, and I had the opportunity to relate this to their president of Savoir-Faire ( U.S. distributor ). They are as good a value, or better, than making your own sticks, which I also do. I so far haven't been able to resource a blue (ultramarine) as good as theirs. I also prodded him to get the good people in France to start making their bigger sheets of pastel paper again, and he was sympathetic to this. Unfortunately the answer from the higher powers was, essentially, GTH!

Van Gogh Project; VG Speaks!

"You are doing vwhut?"
"Achkk! A vfan Gchock prawgekt? Even I don't know vhut my next project vill be. How can you pretend to know ?!"
"Vell, my adfice to you is to remember the colour und ze gesture. Yes, the colour iz ze meanink! Vifout zis, you will not have done a van Gogh! With the drawing, remember the gesture."

Editor's note: The good folks at Fine Line Artists are doing a project for February where each artist will study van Gogh, and produce a work influenced by their discoveries. They will be posting their progress as they go, and have opened the project for others to participate. I will be doing my project along with them, as my conversation with Vincent continues as well.
See this blog soon to see how I will have narrowed my plan down to a digestible chunk. Candidates are to do a plein air (on sight or outdoor artwork) or a portrait.

Van Gogh and I Hold Forth

"You and I share some similarities, Vincent," I says to the apparition of the artist.
"Ja? Vhat?" says he, in a somewhat disapproving grunt.
I shift in my cafe chair. "I was born and raised under a cloud. The gray-skied region of coastal Washington, in the U.S. You were born in the low regions, with the same marine environment."
"I started out drawing with the humble pencil, and it was well suited to the gray, sunless motif," I continue. He puffs on his pipe, knowingly. "You seem to have started out with the dull colors and the grays of your homeland, and when you migrated to the sunny south, the results were flowering colorism. The same happened with my own humble art. When I migrated inland, the bright sunshine renewed my color sense. I decided on colorism as my oeuvre."
"Your French sucks, Casey. Better not to even try it," notes the great Dutchman. "And your pronunciation of my own name is appaling. You must say:'Vincent van Gogh', like that."
"So, you say!" is my reply.
I continue, not daunted, "So you see, your pioneering work in color has been a great influence in the future. What drives me up a wall is the way that so called art critics keep missing this. They look for faces in bushes and pigs in haystacks, while remaining ignorant of your emphasis on color over meaning."
Van Gogh puffs on his pipe, thinking...

Blood On The Keyboards

My fingertips are bleeding on the keyboard. "Damned dry climate, " I mutter to myself, making sure that my grammar is correct even when swearing.
I'm losing a little bit of my grasp on reality these days. In a moment of cognitive dissonance I see myself actually talking with Vincent. Yes, that's right. The famous Vincent van Gogh who never knew his own fame would be so great-never knew that his oil paintings would sell in the tens of millions of dollars at auction.
"Hello," he says in a gruff, heavily accented English. His voice is guttural, as the Dutch language is known to be. The timber of his voice is deep, making him seem far older than he is.
"Good afternoon, Vincent. Cold today, eh?" Says I, shifting on the iron bench.
"Ja! Cold, damned cold. I don't take well to the cold. (coughs) My health prefers the warm, like in the south; in Arles."
"Well, I can't imagine being dead helps that much!" I quip.
We chuckle at the dark joke. We share this black humor, being men of the world and not easily impressed by sentiment. Our breath hangs in the Parisian air.
"At least the cold air is cleaner than the summer air, what?" I offer, trying to be comfortable talking to the legendary artist. It requires some concentration of effort to not let my mind race ahead. I have so much that I would like to ask this tragic man.
Stay posted, dear reader. I will continue to hold forth with VVG in due time.

Free Wallpaper

Here is a free image to use as wallpaper for your screen. I counted it a "failure" as a completed painting, but my wife put it up in a distorted form on her PC screen, and it just looked awesome to me. It is from a project that I started where I want to make van Gogh inspired images of Italian landscapes. See the initial sketch here.
Since I'm temporarily out of my studio, I gave up on that project for the near term.
A few years ago, a college co-ed told me that she had painted one of my images on her dorm room wall. It should go without saying that we don't take or copy images from artists, but today I am offering this colorful and light hearted Italian street sketch as a thank you for your patronage of my blog.
Enjoy!
Preview: tune in soon for my return to the van Gogh thread. The Dutch keener and I will be having a virtual drink at a virtual cafe where I hope to straighten him out a little.

Open Gallery 1/2007

Casey Klahn

Colorist American landscapes


33763 Moore Road North Davenport, Washington 99122
509-796-3277
caseyklahn@msn.com
http://www.caseyklahn.com/
http://www.thecolorist.blogspot.com/

Every so often, I will throw a special online event. This shin-dig will be titled: A Colorist Art Open Gallery. Pour yourself a glass of wine, and enjoy this collection of the art that I have previously shown on The Colorist dot Blogspot, with an added bonus of one newly posted work.

Pink Forest, 7.3” x 5.3”
Original Pastel
$300.00
Casey Klahn

Blue Branches on Red, 14” x 10”
Original Pastel
$1,000.00
Casey Klahn

Red Barn with Ramp, 12.75” x 9.25”
Original Pastel
NFS
Casey Klahn

New Red Corner, 25” x 19”
Original Pastel
NFS
Casey Klahn

The Four Seasons, Winter, 14” x 10”
Original Pastel
NFS
Casey Klahn

First time posting of this art!

Yellow Sky, 18” x 11”
Original Pastel
$1,400.00
Casey Klahn

Red Veiled Forest, 14” x 19”
Original Pastel
$1,900.00
Casey Klahn

Contact me at CaseyKlahn@msn.com with any inquiries, or post comments at this blog. Some of the art is displayed for the sake of continuity in this show, but are NFS, or not for sale because they are in the collections of patrons.

The event special? Free shipping within the USA! (over $60.00 value) All art is lavishly framed in matte black hardwood, square profile, with a white linen liner.

Winter

The Four Seasons, Winter, 14" x 10"
Original Pastel, NFS
Casey Klahn

Let's get back to Colorist Art for a while. Vincent was the first modern Colorist, and we will pull that thread back together in a few more days. My passion is for color, and it's subjective qualities have yet to be fully explored in the world of painting.
My own reasons for exploring color have an interesting history. As a youth I drew with the humble pencil, and over the period from age 5 to age 18 I estimate that I made over 100,000 drawings. Let's see, at least 5 drawings an hour for over 5 hours a day; 350 days a year (with a few days off) times 13 years equals over 100,000. The point is, I got the linear composition thing down pretty well. And values, and shapes, massing, the gesture, etc. These are what artists describe as the formal elements of a picture.
But, my exploration of paint was not as deep, and I had training in color, but only so much. So, when I had the fire in my belly to become a professional artist, I knew that color would be my direction. The reason is simple: growth. Art, to be original, must be new and vital; different and always building - but never tearing down, IMHO.
So, pastel became my "weapon" in my personal color crusade, although paint is probably the pre-eminent choice in the world of 2 dimensional artists. I chose them for their directness, and their link to the process of drawing. The plus side of pastels is their color intensity, purity, and durability.

Some Colorists You Should Know

My own art is in the old and venerable medium of pastel. But, by way of transition, I'd like you to have a look at two painters who use the brush (and other tools) to weave magical colorist abstracts.
Take a nice, long gander at these artist's colorful works. Elizabeth Love, at NZ Art (New Zealand), whose Mixed Media canvases are shouting color and texture at the same time. She has a wonderful grasp of intensities, which she manages to make the most of without overwhelming the structure of her abstract image. Where do we see that in another Colorist's work? Hmmn....clue here.
Then, in Florida, there is the busy Martha Marshall of An Artist's Journal.
Her work, Ember II, is an example of intensity of color that really glows. Her burnished look on this work is magic.

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.

How Do You Make a Landscape Out of Pinks and Greens?

Pink Forest, 7.3" x 5.3"
Pastel on Board
Casey Klahn
$300.00

Here's one of the Colorist American Landscapes in my studio. I am certainly liking that new Nikon D80 camera.

Italian Street Sketch

Italian Street with Red Clay Pots, Casey Klahn,
Pencil, Colored Pencil, Charcoal and Pastel on Sketch Paper

We're in the middle of a big studio remodel, so I have to work when the kids are out of the house. I have set up on the dining room table temporarily, and am suffering through the bad posture that goes with drawing without the easel.

Can't wait for the springtime, and when we get electricity to the new studio.

Anyway, I have resourced some more images from Italy, as my own are limited. This is a "first go" at an Italian landscape. I started out with colored pencils, but digressed to my comfort zone of soft and hard pastels. This one needs better value range, but I am having fun with it.

This drawing and the self portrait were also uploaded from my scanner bed, just for speed's sake.

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.

The Mysterious Vincent

Who the heck is this?


You know who
Adding to the mystery the old boy gathers around himself, is the apparent lack of a recognized photo of VVG.

The one above is dated circa the 1880s, and originates out of the Netherlands. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam rejects it's authenticity, as it's provenance is sketchy, at best. And, they get at least one kook a day showing up with a long-lost photo of the keener.

You be the judge.

Vincent the Vile

van Gogh, 1889












If any of us, I think surely myself, were to meet in 1888 poor Vincent van Gogh on the street, I dare say we would cross to the other side to avoid the old boy!

He is described by many as odoriferous, ugly and offensive. I did not know, before, that his manner of speech and his quirky gestures were as odd as described in Martin Gayford's book, The Yellow House… (See a full review of the book in the Independent UK here.)

I did come upon a story in Yellow House that I personally remember reading in a newspaper way back in 1988. It concerns an Arlesienne lady, a centenarian, who was introduced to, and remembered quite vividly, the quirky Dutch painter who used to buy canvas at her husband-to-be's fabric shop. Her name was Jeanne Calment, and she considered van Gogh uncomely, ungracious, impolite, and bad smelling.

Too bad she never sat for a portrait, though. It wouldn't have hurt her posterity at all to have been able to pass on a few million francs to her family.

This story gets me. For the youth among my gentle readers, the year 1988 seems ancient history, I'm sure. But to those of us with a little gray on the noggin, it's just the same as yesterday. And here was someone with a personal memory of the great painter ! No wonder I feel that his art is as fresh today as it ever was.

Postmortem, his profile in the art world grew with time, as exhibits were hung in Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and The Hague. A large retrospective (I think I read @ 30 works) was mounted in Paris in 1901, and then again in 1905. Other shows followed, including New York, in 1913 and Berlin, in 1914.

Today, there is enough on van Gogh in the cyber world to almost make Elvis jealous (VVG: 4.6 million google entries; Elvis Presley: 4.7 million). His art has sold for an excess of 82 million dollars outside of the already out-of-this-world auction market for his art.

You may think that it's too bad that he never saw any of this money. On the other hand, he did see every work as it came off the easel. Who has the last laugh, there?

Perhaps You Would Like to Sleep Where Vincent Slept?

Vincent's Chair with His Pipe, van Gogh, 1888

There is a hotel in Arles, France, a short distance from the actual yellow house which apparently was bombed in the Second World War. In it, is a full scale recreation of van Gogh's bedroom.

You, too, can sleep in his bed, and "channel" his genius.

Let's hope they've changed the sheets since VVG's time.

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!