Van Gogh, finally
This blog has been in existence far too long without artwork by the brilliant Dutch artist Van Gogh. I atone for my negligence with this post. My apologies Vincent.
I know it’s probably terribly unoriginal and cliched for me to say that “Starry Night” is one of my all time favorite paintings. Yes, the “Starry Night” that’s been degraded into lampshades and bookmarks and cheap stained glass panels and nightlights (OK, I confess. I have the nightlight. My mother gave it to me and I adore it. So there!). My point is that “Starry Night” ROCKS. A gorgeous, imaginative, stunningly passionate work of art. I can SEE that night sky. Through Van Gogh’s intense, sensitive vision, I can truly see it.
But this is Museworthy, and even though Van Gogh is most well-known for his landscapes, cafe scenes, and self-portraits, we will acknowledge his proficiency at figure drawing, and the important role of muses in his personal and artistic life. He had relationships with prostitutes. One in particular, named Sien, lived with him in a fairly domesticated arrangement, along with her illegitimate child, not fathered by Van Gogh.
In a letter to a friend, Van Gogh wrote:
“In spite of everything, I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”
That was written in 1880. The following drawings were done in 1886. Looks like Van Gogh was a man of his word. He drew again just as he said – with certainty and dedication – that he would. And did he ever! Check out these incredible images of Van Gogh’s figure drawings:
Don Pablo said,
February 16, 2008 at 11:49 am
For those interested in some very-informative background information concerning how and why, during the last seventy days of his life, Vincent van Gogh was able to produce over seventy incredibly-beautiful final masterpieces, the recent historical novel “The Last Van Gogh” (Penguin) by the internationally acclaimed author Alyson Richman provides some amazing insight. The author traveled to the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise on a number of occasions and meticulously researched the period during which Van Gogh lived there, even interviewing a number of the village’s elders, who knew his last muse, Magaret Gachet, the daughter of the homeopathic doctor who was treating Van Gogh at the time. It’s truly a wonderful novel, beautifully written and highly recommended. (It’s available in paperback at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.) For anybody who loves Van Gogh’s works, this book should prove unbelievably fascinating. [Incidentally, Ms. Richman is also the author of the highly-reviewed novels “The Mask Carver’s Son” (Bloomsbury – 2000) and “Swedish Tango” (Simon & Schuster – 2004).]
The exciting new information about Van Gogh that Ms. Richman researched and incorporated into her fascinating new novel has already generated considerable interest and enthusiasm in lectures and discussion groups at fine art museums around the country, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dayton Museum of Fine Art the Heckscher Museum of Art (in Huntington, New York) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.