Now I know why I am so lonely all the time. I thought it was because nobody liked talking to me, and I'm unpleasant to look at (or generally be near) but no! It's my genius!
A delightful portrait. Aren't we lucky to have people whose suffering brings us such beauty. I think the same about David Foster Wallace and various people from the world of music. Their pain is our redemption.
An artist whose work captivated me almost from the moment I first saw it and to which I see parallels here was El Greco who in many ways shares quite a similar life story and fate. The works of his in the museum in Toledo are really quite striking and has much of the same immediacy and power of Byzantine icons (into whose tradition he was trained) translated to the Renaissance idiom producing a quite a sublime effect in the Burkean sense of the word. And similar to that which Van Gogh produced with respect to the Impressionist idiom.
Have you ever seen that scene in the French film The Lacemaker, where Isabelle Hupert stands in front of a bookshop, feeling she should be more of a reader so as to be able to converse with her boyfriend and his intellectual friends, yet not even knowing where to start? There are just so many books! That's how I feel about art.
I know I dislike everything modern or abstract (to quote Basil Fawlty, 'What's the point?') and I know I find almost everything before the 19th century boring, with its endless brownish portraits of chinless aristocrats in ruffs, set against some imaginary, misty classical background with ruined pillars, but though I dislike 19th century art much less, to say I liked it would be an overstatement. After admiring the workmanship - I can't even draw a convincing cow - I am left wondering why the artist painted it. To make money? What was he trying to capture, other than the brute fact of a peasant girl and her husband lying exhausted in a field? What was he trying to convey?
I suppose what I'm saying is that art doesn't move me in the same way it seems to move some people. If it moves you then you don't need 'a point'. The pleasure is enough. But for me it's just a way of whiling away the time before my National Express coach takes me back from Victoria to Leicester after submitting my application for my Japanese working visa. In truth, rather than inspecting the paintings I usually end up looking at the other visitors to the gallery and guessing which country they are from.
Personally I think van Gogh is overrated, the first artist created through media. His early sketch work can only be described as really terrible, he's not trying to be an impressionist he just doesn't have the basic skills. If you're in Amsterdam, go to the Rijksmuseum instead, Rembrandt is just on another level in terms of quality.
Then the story about his poverty makes my teeth itch. For anyone to live in the late 1800 and never do any work yet still afford the expensive hobby of painting and eating in restaurants is more than dramatic license.
I don't value my own opinion to give my relative thoughts on two very different artists. obviously Rembrandt was a genius (think I prefer Vermeer, but just a matter of opinion)
The Western tradition of painting was collapsing by Van Gogh's time (witness other painters of the time), so comparing him to a 17th century Dutch Master is meaningless and unfair.
Painting and eating in cheap restaurants are vastly cheaper than the hobbies of the Decent Hardworking Classes, many of which depend on producing carbon.
If you don't want to compare him to Rembrandt (which is a fair comment of yours) then compare him Monet, Pissaro, Renoir, Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas etc or later Picasso. Specifically their early sketch work. Van Gogh clearly lacked very basic technical ability.
By late 19th century standards he was in no way poor. Who else could afford to not work? De Aardappeleters being considered a masterpiece annoys me even more. Scrounging off your brother, painting ordinary people ineptly and then thinking you're being ever so profound.
With the Canon Club series I always like to think of how the particular artist compares in relation to the other greats who were alive in his final year of life (in this case 1890).
Based on how their completed by 1890 work is regarded today, rather than by contemporaries, from my limited knowledge and some googling, I'd say the Top 10 was like this..
1. Tolstoy
2. Verdi
3. Claude Monet
4. Tchaikovsky
5. Cezzane
6. Van Gogh
7. Brahms
8. Walt Whitman
9. Renoir
10. Mark Twain
Others to consider would be Robert Louis Stevenson & Tennyson.
The 19th century wasn't the Triumph of Progress still celebrated by many history books.
It was a nasty, lonely place, full of people tormented by the rapid pace of change and, like Van Gogh, by the loss of their Christian faith.
Those, like Gauguin and Van Gogh, who wouldn't or couldn't worship Money, were consigned to the Abyss.
The middle-class dined on the volcano, pretending not to notice the sulphurous fumes curling around them.
The upper classes were insanely gluttonous (kept alive by a proliferation of spa towns), hence insanely lecherous and even more insanely bellicose.
The lower classes lived on drink and, the men, on lechery.
So corrupt a society was doomed to disaster, and that disaster arrived in 1914.
With worse to follow. The year before Van Gogh's death, another artistic ne'er-do-well was born; in Austria. 1914 turned him into a soldier, and the years after 1918, into history's most evil and aggressive tyrant.
If genius seems odd to others, think about it seems to the person so afflicted. If reality seemed to be a constant swirl. wouldn't madness be inevitable?
I was thinking a watered-down version of this excellently told narrative could make for a decent TV show( a la Genius series), but now I believe it's just too depressing and syphilis-filled for the small screen.
Now I know why I am so lonely all the time. I thought it was because nobody liked talking to me, and I'm unpleasant to look at (or generally be near) but no! It's my genius!
ha ha! that must be it
A delightful portrait. Aren't we lucky to have people whose suffering brings us such beauty. I think the same about David Foster Wallace and various people from the world of music. Their pain is our redemption.
thank you
An artist whose work captivated me almost from the moment I first saw it and to which I see parallels here was El Greco who in many ways shares quite a similar life story and fate. The works of his in the museum in Toledo are really quite striking and has much of the same immediacy and power of Byzantine icons (into whose tradition he was trained) translated to the Renaissance idiom producing a quite a sublime effect in the Burkean sense of the word. And similar to that which Van Gogh produced with respect to the Impressionist idiom.
Have you ever seen that scene in the French film The Lacemaker, where Isabelle Hupert stands in front of a bookshop, feeling she should be more of a reader so as to be able to converse with her boyfriend and his intellectual friends, yet not even knowing where to start? There are just so many books! That's how I feel about art.
I know I dislike everything modern or abstract (to quote Basil Fawlty, 'What's the point?') and I know I find almost everything before the 19th century boring, with its endless brownish portraits of chinless aristocrats in ruffs, set against some imaginary, misty classical background with ruined pillars, but though I dislike 19th century art much less, to say I liked it would be an overstatement. After admiring the workmanship - I can't even draw a convincing cow - I am left wondering why the artist painted it. To make money? What was he trying to capture, other than the brute fact of a peasant girl and her husband lying exhausted in a field? What was he trying to convey?
I suppose what I'm saying is that art doesn't move me in the same way it seems to move some people. If it moves you then you don't need 'a point'. The pleasure is enough. But for me it's just a way of whiling away the time before my National Express coach takes me back from Victoria to Leicester after submitting my application for my Japanese working visa. In truth, rather than inspecting the paintings I usually end up looking at the other visitors to the gallery and guessing which country they are from.
Reading about how women reacted to him, I'm starting to think he couldn't have looked much like the fellow who played Spartacus at all.
I'm listening to your Canon Club podcast on Bruckner right now. Really enjoying it!
thank you!
I heard [on the internet, etc] Van Gogh took digitalis medicine, which causes the user to see things with a yellow blur
Lovely piece. Is "Your panting will be all the more spermatic" a Freudian slip, or did he really say that?!
it's what it says in the book. I don't know what the original French or Dutch word is though.
I'd assumed he meant "Your painting" as in "suffused with life force"!
Personally I think van Gogh is overrated, the first artist created through media. His early sketch work can only be described as really terrible, he's not trying to be an impressionist he just doesn't have the basic skills. If you're in Amsterdam, go to the Rijksmuseum instead, Rembrandt is just on another level in terms of quality.
Then the story about his poverty makes my teeth itch. For anyone to live in the late 1800 and never do any work yet still afford the expensive hobby of painting and eating in restaurants is more than dramatic license.
you'd have got on with his dad then!
I don't value my own opinion to give my relative thoughts on two very different artists. obviously Rembrandt was a genius (think I prefer Vermeer, but just a matter of opinion)
The Western tradition of painting was collapsing by Van Gogh's time (witness other painters of the time), so comparing him to a 17th century Dutch Master is meaningless and unfair.
Painting and eating in cheap restaurants are vastly cheaper than the hobbies of the Decent Hardworking Classes, many of which depend on producing carbon.
BTW Do you work for Conservative Central Office ?
If you don't want to compare him to Rembrandt (which is a fair comment of yours) then compare him Monet, Pissaro, Renoir, Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas etc or later Picasso. Specifically their early sketch work. Van Gogh clearly lacked very basic technical ability.
By late 19th century standards he was in no way poor. Who else could afford to not work? De Aardappeleters being considered a masterpiece annoys me even more. Scrounging off your brother, painting ordinary people ineptly and then thinking you're being ever so profound.
I could’ve told you Ed, this life was never meant for one as beautiful as he…….
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
With the Canon Club series I always like to think of how the particular artist compares in relation to the other greats who were alive in his final year of life (in this case 1890).
Based on how their completed by 1890 work is regarded today, rather than by contemporaries, from my limited knowledge and some googling, I'd say the Top 10 was like this..
1. Tolstoy
2. Verdi
3. Claude Monet
4. Tchaikovsky
5. Cezzane
6. Van Gogh
7. Brahms
8. Walt Whitman
9. Renoir
10. Mark Twain
Others to consider would be Robert Louis Stevenson & Tennyson.
I like Tolstoy at the top.
Van Gogh's family were also tormented people, though without genius.
Whereas other unconventional artists - Monet, Renoir, Pissarro - weren't tormented.
The article should be titled "The Terrible Loneliness of Clinical Depression."
The 19th century wasn't the Triumph of Progress still celebrated by many history books.
It was a nasty, lonely place, full of people tormented by the rapid pace of change and, like Van Gogh, by the loss of their Christian faith.
Those, like Gauguin and Van Gogh, who wouldn't or couldn't worship Money, were consigned to the Abyss.
The middle-class dined on the volcano, pretending not to notice the sulphurous fumes curling around them.
The upper classes were insanely gluttonous (kept alive by a proliferation of spa towns), hence insanely lecherous and even more insanely bellicose.
The lower classes lived on drink and, the men, on lechery.
So corrupt a society was doomed to disaster, and that disaster arrived in 1914.
With worse to follow. The year before Van Gogh's death, another artistic ne'er-do-well was born; in Austria. 1914 turned him into a soldier, and the years after 1918, into history's most evil and aggressive tyrant.
Yes, it seems many great men - and women - of history seem to otherwise live rather chaotic lives.
Like City of London traders.
If genius seems odd to others, think about it seems to the person so afflicted. If reality seemed to be a constant swirl. wouldn't madness be inevitable?
I was thinking a watered-down version of this excellently told narrative could make for a decent TV show( a la Genius series), but now I believe it's just too depressing and syphilis-filled for the small screen.