Arts and Exhibitions

[Lhoffman]

Do you think he was looking at the texture? 

And isn't Starry Night quite a different painting in person than it is in the posters we see everywhere!  I had no idea just how truly beautiful it is.

[harrie]

Lhoffman, that's a very good point; it was just weird how he always kneeled by the lower right corner, studied it for a few seconds, and then took off for another work.  Whereas I'm basically a leaner/squinter, so maybe it's just his style.

The Starry Night is indeed powerful in person, but it's funny -- I went to see it in NYC while in high school, and was seriously moved by it then; this time, not so much.  Still amazing, don't get me wrong. It might be the way Yale presented it, or might just be me. 

I liked Cypresses quite a bit for the emotion it expressed - just honkin' big swirls of paint, very strong, very dark (the feeling, not the painting, as it's a daytime scene), very painful.  To elaborate:  Cypresses has a blue sky background complete with puffy clouds and brightness.  Then in the foreground, two huge, dark cypresses rise up sort of forebodingly.  Here's a link to the picture, since my description is "eh" at best.  Okay, done obsessing.

http://www.dl.ket.org/webmuseum/wm/paint/auth/gogh/fields/gogh.cypresses.jpg

[Lhoffman]

I like your description.  I've seen this painting but I sort of just moved on.  The painting didn't really say anything to me...blue sky, trees, wind, etc.  But the word "foreboding" gives it a dimension I hadn't seen before. 

For me, Van Gogh's painting often seem to convey a sense of loneliness and emptiness.  Here's an example of one I like...although I've never seen it in person.   Undergrowth with Two Figures.  The couple is walking together through a woods.  Their near arms are linked and they are alone.  These things might serve to convey a sense of intimacy, but their outer arms are straight and unrelaxed.  The man appears to looking away from the woman.



Then there is the more famous Cafe Terrace at Night.  It seems like this would be a more convivial scene.  The evening is lovely, the cafe looks inviting.  But when you look more closely, you notice that many of the women are sitting alone. 

[harrie]

I haven't seen Undergrowth with Two Figures before - it's very cool.  I wonder if the distance expressed between the two people (the stiff arms, man looking away) is at all indicative of Van Gogh's mental issues, ie he feels at odds with the world - just as these people are close to each other but not really.

Funny you should mention Cafe Terrace at Night, as Night Cafe is a permanent fixture at Yale. It's a little blunter than Cafe Terrace at Night in that the colors and angles, or lack of them in some places, make it an uncomfortable picture to view.  You feel off-kilter looking at it, and the colors are somewhat disturbing. Not to mention the number of people who appear to be crying in their beer.

[madupont]

harrie,

"...he feels at odds with the world"

That's also there in, Cypresses.  They are tumultuous.  Of course, it could be wind, but I doubt it. The atmosphere is disturbed.  Is it a storm? or, is this just him?

Many of his paintings are that way, particularly during his Gauguin-competitiveness phase.

Then after the incident, and the hospital, he calms down. His painting of his doctor: "thoughty", the doctor analyzing him is what he mirrors back to the doctor by painting the doctor Gachet.

His portrait of the postman, Joseph Roulin, quite the opposite (plural portraits, actually) dignified, positive energy very calm. On that note, I keep a night-light that reproduces this quality of peace,in his painting,Houses at Auvers.

I  think the Yale Museum has a fantastic collection by comparison to other university collection. They seem very staid about it but, the first time I noticed it from an on-line description, when I was trying to reach the press to place an order, it made me feel that I ought to hurry and hop a train up to Yale to browse (while I still could?) I may already be past such spur of the moment jaunts.

[Lhoffman]

Night Cafe



I love the red van Gogh uses here.  It has a depth and a purity that is not often found in other reds.  He used the same for his Poppies.  But I think your feelings about the painting are on.  It wasn't meant to be pleasing or to make us comfortable.

Here is what van Gogh said about the painting:

I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.

The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green.  Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue.  The blood red and yellow green of the billiard table contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter on which there is a nosegay in rose color.  The white coat of the patron, on vigil in a corner of this furnace, turns lemon yellow, or pale luminous green.

[Lhoffman]

That's also there in, Cypresses.  They are tumultuous.  Of course, it could be wind, but I doubt it. The atmosphere is disturbed.  Is it a storm? or, is this just him?

You might be right about this.  Van Gogh painted it while at Saint-Remy.  The background has the same tumultuous eddy that is to be found in other paintings from this time, including his self-portrait at Saint-Remy.



What is really interesting is his painting of Doctor Gachet, also painted at Saint-Remy but a year later,  seems to have less of the eddying motion and more vertical strokes.  The eddy is still present, but it is generalized over the entirety of the painting and so seems a bit less tumultuous.  (If you look at the pattern of the eddy, the center seems to be between the top buttons of the doctor's jacket.)



Looking at Undergrowth with Two Figures, painted at Auvers....far more vertical effect.

[madupont]

Another comment made about this last painting of always weary Dr. Gachet, if you will notice the digitalis-producing foxglove in the lower left of the painting, perhaps the doctor was experimenting. It is usually used to stabilize the heartbeat but in overdose is powerfully hallucinogenic. 

The supposition having been made that Vincent was self medicating(causing the eddy of his brush technique) as he was already addicted to absinthe, his favorite for "the cocktail hours" with fellow artists in the local cafe where ever. As you notice there is a lot of difference in his technique in the South of France compared to when he joined his brother,Theo, a missionary among the  Dutch peasants with their lantern jaws as seen in his painging,The Potato Eaters.

Another concept that the critics mention, those yellow dots of light whether in The Night Cafe or in the painting of a house at Auvers where you can see a configuration in the right upper of the painting, just past the roof of the house are some concentric circles and the yellow dot of a "star" which is actually a planet that allowed the dating of the painting to be made which exactly specified by the painter that it stood for the hour at which he painted it whether or not the planet would normally be visible to the naked eye at that time or not.  Vincent had a lot of these quirks and peculiarities which may have resulted from his known habit or his conjectured habit, or because of his congenital epilepsy.

I was a little crestfallen at the Akira Kurosawa film version of Van Gogh; but then, the Kirk Douglas representation was not exactly edification either.  It was very likely a direct result of the Japanese film that however led to the Japanese ownership of a very expensive vase with flowers that upped the value of the painting beyond what it had been before.  Although it was Kurosawa's film, Dreams, Martin Scorsese did the role of Vincent Van Gogh.

[madupont]

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/44792,arts,chimera-obscura,7

[madupont]

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/22/arts/20080722_HELMUT_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Illustrative of how concept celebrity differs by culture. The fellow who writes the accompanying essay(lines from which explain the photos) tries to pretend this is not in the nytimes.com because Barack Obama will arrive in Deutschland.

I particularly liked #9's rationale, because I've spent over a year here with somebody trying to "trash" me everyway they can. Do I resent it?
Of course not. I just get even.

[madupont]

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/44940,arts,art-in-pictures

[madupont]

http://pol.moveon.org/mh/enter/index.html

[madupont]

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/44974,arts,jakob-roepke-kafka-meets-laura-ashley

[incadove0]

Le Baiser, Auguste Rodin, 1901-04




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The Kiss, Giuseppe Ragazzini, 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgrjDed2OHc

[madupont]

 http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45078,features,the-best-photography-from-chinas-olympic-games