Van Gogh [antikvár]

Introduction Vincent Van Gogii died by his own hand, an impoverished failure in the eyes of the world. He had struggled to succeed in a number of fields: as an art dealer, teacher, missionary and only finally as a painter. He committed suicide at the very time his work was beginning to attract both critical approval and the enthusiasm of his fellow artists, yet today he is probably the most popular anc widely known painter in the entire his tory of art, known to millions through reproductions of his works. The contrast between the obscurity of his life and his universal posthumous acclaim has become in the popular imagination the prototype story of the modem artist: a poor and dejected outcast, descending into madness, but whose genius, inevitably only recognized after his early death, brings him immortality. Van Gogh would not have despised this popularity, for above aU else he wanted his painting to reach ordinary people and be a part of their Uves. His great compassion for the suffering of others, together with the pain and loneliness he suffered himself, gave to his art a universality beyond dry intellectual or historical themes, and his life itself seemed to dramatize the very essence ofthe emotions that we all encounter, albeit less intensely. In this respect his paintings deal with things that are simple to recognize and easy to sympathize with, whatever our own particular experiences have been. Not only do Van Gogh's painUngs address fundamental human emotions very directly, they also depict the real world square on. His subject matter was nearly always what was before his easel — concrete, familiar, everyday reality. Although he was highly literate, deeply absorbed in spiritual issues and had a thorough knowledge of artistic tradition, his work is never complicated by obscure allusions or layers of meaning intelligible only to the few. Although his paintings have great depth, this is never at the expense of direct impact. The obvious sincerity of his work is one of its chief attractions, and ils emotional force is very directly conveyed through his Vincent Van Gogh Setf-portrait 1888 Van Gogh Museum, Otterlo painting technique. His brushwork is almost a form of speech, and a highly articulate one. As well as expressing his own emotional state. Van Gogh's art also tells us a great deal about the events of his life, since everything that happened to him was directly reflected in his subjects and how he painted them. This again makes him very approachable, an artist who keeps nothing hidden from his audience. However, the expression of his thoughts and feelings, and the description of events in his life were not confmed to his paintings. Throughout his Ufe he recorded his intimate thoughts in a remarkable series of letters to his brother Theo, who worked as an art dealer in Paris. The two brothers were extremely close, sharing similar temperaments and concerns. PuMished after Theo's death, this correspondence tells the same story as the paintings, of the many false starts in Ufe, of his struggle for survival as a painter and of his mental collapse and periodic internments in a lunatic asylum. Through these intimate and moving letters it is possible to know Van Gogh as closely as his own brother did, and to follow the struggle of his Ufe and the development of his art Background and early life Van Gogh's lUe reflected many ofthe central issues of his Ume, in particular reUgion and sociaUsm, the two great formative influences on his Ufe, which were also of crucial importance in the history ofthe nineteenth centurj' itself. He was the son of a Dutch Protestant minister, and throughout his early life he idolized his father and was himself deeply devout. He began his career, however, following in the footsteps of his imcle Vincent, who had been an important figure in the firm of Goupil & Co., picture dealers with branches in Paris, London and The Hague. Van Gogh worked for short periods at all three of these branches, but after seven years of increasing disillusionment both with his employers and with tlie business itself, he left, at the age of twenty-three.