Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [92]
Art became van Gogh’s only refuge. In the south of France, “I let myself go,” he said, “paint what I see and how I feel and hang the rules!” From 1888-90, at Aries, at the sanitorium at Saint-Rémy, and finally at Auvers under the care of Dr. Gachet, van Gogh, although deeply disturbed and prey to hallucinations, turned out one masterpiece after another, an output unmatched in the history of art. Inspired by nature, he painted cypresses, blossoming fruit trees, flowers, and wheatfields charged with his favorite color, yellow.
It was while he was a patient in the Saint-Rémy asylum that van Gogh produced “Starry Night” (see p. 112). He was painting in a “dumb fury” during this period, staying up three nights in a row to paint because, as he wrote, “The night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” Yet, though in a fever of productivity, “I wonder when I’ll get my starry night done,” he wrote, “ a picture that haunts me always. ”
Van Gogh, “Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat,” 1887, MMA, NY.
Van Gogh, “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,” 1889, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London.
SELF-PORTRAITS
Van Gogh did nearly forty self-portraits in oil, more than any artist except his fellow Dutchman Rembrandt. His aim in portraits was to capture the essence of human life so vividly that 100 years later, the portraits would seem like “apparitions. ” In his self-portraits the artist’s presence seems so intense one has the impression of a tormented spirit haunting the canvas.
“Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat” reflects the Impressionist influence. Van Gogh said he wanted “to paint men and women with something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize.” The whirlpool of brushstrokes encircling his head has that effect.
The later “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, ” done two weeks after his disastrous quarrrel with Gauguin and self-mutilation, shows van Gogh’s unflinching self-revelation. Using very few colors, van Gogh concentrates all agony in the eyes. “I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals,” he wrote, “for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral. ”
The picture conveys surging movement through curving brushwork, and the stars and moon seem to explode with energy. “What I am doing is not by accident,” van Gogh wrote, “but because of real intention and purpose.” For all the dynamic force of “Starry Night,” the composition is carefully balanced. The upward thrusting cypresses echo the vertical steeple, each cutting across curving, lateral lines of hill and sky. In both cases, the vertical forms act as brakes, counterforces to prevent the eye from traveling out of the picture. The dark cypresses also offset the bright moon in the opposite corner for a balanced effect. The forms of the objects determine the rhythmic flow of brushstrokes, so that the overall effect is of expressive unity rather than chaos.
VINCENT AND THEO
Vincent and his younger brother Théo, an art dealer in Paris, had a close, though difficult, lifelong friendship. When it became obvious Vincent could never support himself in a conventional profession (he tried art gallery assistant, teacher, and missionary), Théo became his sole financial support, allowing Vincent to paint full-time. Throughout his life Vincent poured out his despair and ambitions in letters to Théo. These have become the essential source of information about the artist’s life and work. When Vincent killed himself, Théo rushed to his side. Heartbroken, he wrote their mother, “He was so my own, own brother.” Théo soon went mad himself and, within five months of Vincent’s suicide, died.
Van Gogh, “Crows over Cornfield,” 1890, Notional Museum of Van