Vincent wrote to his sister of his red poppies’ “gracious curves” in 1890, the last year of his life. As I stood in front of van Gogh’s Field with Poppies rushing and swirling up hill and off the canvas under a frothy blue, green, and white sky, I thought of Georgia O’Keefe’s many red poppy paintings. What do these two disparate artists have in common and why do I love them so much? They both dared to look deeply into the flowers, trees, and landscapes that called to them, not afraid to paint the emotions they evoked. They shared the close-up view, a commitment to conveying what burns within the ordinary so passionately that their paintings seem to leap out and embrace the viewer in rapture. I had not realized that before the 1890s, no other artist had presented close-in views of nature as intimately and confrontationally as Vincent van Gogh.
Another commonality is that sensationalism threatened to overshadow the genius of both O’Keefe and van Gogh—their bodies of work painstakingly constructed with vision, ambition, and discipline. Van Gogh’s mental illness and suicide has been fetishized. What if he did not kill himself? Last year’s exhaustively-researched, best-selling biography, Van Gogh: The Life, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith proposes just that. That 60 Minutes publicized their work attests to our cultural obsession with the artist.
Is it possible to have a fresh perspective on that most beloved and tragic figure, Vincent? Yes, I am happy to report, after seeing Van Gogh Close Up, a thrilling, challenging exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It runs from February 1 to May 6 and moves to Ottowa from May 25 to September 3, 2012. This well-curated exhibition helps viewers see exactly how Vincent van Gogh eschewed traditional perspective, scale and space for something magnificent and stunning.
During his brief ten-year career, van Gogh created an astonishing 800 paintings and 900 drawings. To be in a gallery with over 40 of those paintings carefully assembled from museums and private collections around the world was to feel extremely privileged. Covering his final years in France (1886 to 1890), Van Gogh Up Close is organized exuberantly around such visual subjects as flowers, blades of grass, tree trunks, forest undergrowth, landscapes with high horizons, and “radical still lifes.”
The exhibition abounds with nuanced examples of the many aesthetic, practical, and emotional planes van Gogh juggled simultaneously. He was able to both calm his emotions and secure a unique place in European art by challenging himself to zoom in on the basic elements of his natural world. For Vincent, to paint a blade of grass was simultaneously a meditation, an homage to the Japanese prints that so influenced the Impressionists, and a willed, consciously unique contribution to art.
Upon entering, you are confronted with the ubiquitous glowing sunflowers, nearly pulsating with yellow life. But off to the right and more indicative of the show’s theme are two fallen sunflower heads in a small 1887 painting from the Met. One upturned and one overturned sunflower head reveal their humble fate against a scintillating blue background.
Other surprising flower paintings include Bowl with Zinnias and Other Flowers (1886). Its profusion of delicate white flowers engulfing a few yellow and red zinnias illustrates the luminosity Van Gogh would create with stark color juxtapositions. Flowers in a green vase sit on a multi-colored surface that evoked Paris streets after the rain.
The “blades of grass” paintings were delightful. Van Gogh admired Japanese artists’ ability to focus on a single blade of grass and used that as a metaphor for living simply. In Long Grass with Butterflies (1889), a few carefully placed black lines delineate clumps of green and yellow grass amidst lavender patches of light. A sliver of road barely visible at the top of the painting seems insignificant next to the spirited grass landscape. In contrast, in Grasses and Butterflies, also from 1889, a line of three vibrantly colored bunches of grass seem to race off the right side of the canvas, looking like a pack of mad chinchillas. White butterflies float serenely next to them. It made me laugh.
Vincent’s tree trunks ranged from divine to menacing. The scratchy red and pink tree trunks that frame Park of the Asylum at Saint-Remy (1889) loom like red serpents. The claustrophobic scene pierced by a tall, sharp cypress tree may reflect Vincent’s mental state but the exhibit resists such reductionist interpretations. The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Remy) (1889) appear less malevolent, but they are huge and overwhelming, seeming ready to burst into flame. [The scary apple-throwing trees from the Wizard of Oz came to mind.] On a lighter note, in Undergrowth (1887), the speckled yellow light flowing onto a green, brown, and red forest floor from behind the tree trunk conveys the joy of discovery in a walk through the woods.
Radical is the proper description of Vincent’s still lifes. Still Life with Quinces (1888) almost quivers with fleshy, erotic joy. Looking like plump partridges, chubby golden fruit tumble down an aquamarine and brown tree trunk onto a surface thick with van Gogh’s famous brush strokes in yellow, gold, blue, and gray. Twenty dashes of red (I counted them) enliven the view.
Van Gogh’s landscapes affected me the most deeply, especially Rain (1889) and Wheat Fields at Auvers After the Rain (1890). Painted through his barred window in the asylum at St. Remy, Rain portrays fenced-in green and brown fields being pelted with gray rain. Pale lavender hills rise far away on the minimized horizon. Close to the viewer in the foreground is a dispiriting mud foot path. The scene conveys melancholy enclosure while still pulsing with energy.
In contrast, Wheat Fields at Auvers After the Rain, painted a year later, is my favorite and to me the most exuberant painting in the exhibition. A big blue sky swells over an infinite landscape of golden fields highlighted with mint green patches of new life. A gentle hill dotted with red poppies rises in the foreground. All is possibility.
New life is the theme of my favorite Vincent painting of all time, Almond Blossom (1890). Writing to his sister in June 1890, a month before he died, Vincent exclaimed:
During the last weeks at St. Remy I worked like a man in a frenzy, especially on bunches of flowers, roses, and violet irises. I brought along a relatively large picture for Theo’s and Jo’s little boy—which they hung over the piano—white almond blossoms—big branches against a sky blue background.
What he did not mention is that his beloved brother Theo named his son after Vincent. And it was this Dr. Vincent van Gogh who made his collection of his uncle’s paintings available to travel to the Brooklyn Museum in 1971, where I saw them at a very impressionable young age. Vincent Van Gogh’s Paintings and Drawings was the largest collection of his works then to travel outside of Amsterdam’s new Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh.
I remember standing with my parents on what seemed to be an enormous snaking line for an interminable amount of time. I had no idea how lucky I was. As a museum brochure noted:
“Because of the special expenses involved in showing VINCENT VAN GOGH: PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS, The Brooklyn Museum is forced to charge an admission fee of $1.00 for adults and children over 12; 50¢ for children under 12 (accompanied by an adult), 50¢ for high school, college and art school students with I.D. cards; and 50¢ for museum members.”
How times have changed.
I remember being inside the large, crowded exhibit, feeling mesmerized and ecstatic. After driving home from a perfect day in Philadelphia, I can report that the thrill has not gone away. Here is the link to the Philadelphia Museum of Art--do not procratinate! http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/743.html
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