Vincent Van Gogh at the National Gallery of Art - Report Example

 Vincent Van Gogh at the National Gallery of Art Today, Vincent Van Gogh is widely regarded as one of the most famous artists of all time. His talent, use of color and heavy use of impasto to help illustrate his vision and emotion regarding his subject has long inspired artists of all types to study his work. He is, perhaps, the most famous post-impressionist, giving birth to the style known as Expressionist thanks to his emotive form of creating images. Most lay-persons in the general community are able to name at least one of his works despite the fact that his paintings command some of the highest prices in the marketplace. Reproductions of his work appear on posters, calendars, mouse pads, and other widespread consumer items. His influence was especially strong on the French Fauvists and German Expressionists immediately following his death. Even those works not immediately known today are quickly recognized by his unique style and approach, yet Van Gogh himself saw little of this success or popularity while he was alive. No publications can be found discussing his work while he was alive and only a few mentions of him, mostly negative, are found before 1910. However, paintings such as Wheatfield with Cypress reveal a great deal of the artist’s approach and emotion as well as the various ways in which he revolutionized the art world. Wheatfield with Cypress is an example of Van Gogh’s work while he was a resident at Saint-Remy hospital for the mentally unstable. It is a member of a series of paintings in which Van Gogh explored an image or a theme. Whether it was this painting or another one of the series, he wrote to his brother Theo that the trees “are always occupying my thoughts, I should like to make something of them like the canvases of the sunflowers, because it astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them. The tree is as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk. And the green has a quality of such distinction. It is a splash of black in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interesting black notes, and the most difficult to hit off exactly that I can imagine” (cited in Wallace, 1969: 144). His fascination with the trees themselves as well as their contribution to the landscape overall is evident within this painting. The image depicts an initially confusing scene. The brightly lit landscape is covered by a swirling mass of clouds in a sky that seems eternally blue. The scene depicts a golden wheatfield not far from the hospital in which Van Gogh stayed in southern France. The field is interrupted by a set of wind-swept green bushes in its center to provide balance and a pair of flame-like cypresses standing proudly to one side. This is backed by small green foothills and then blue-tinged mountains rising to back the cypress trees. In the extreme foreground, a glimpse is given of a spring-green field filled with wild flowers in the bottom right corner. Another vividly green bushy area surrounds the two cypress trees, providing a solid base to the narrow triangular trees as well as the first of a flowing succession of horizon lines leading the eye by steps up the height of the trees. This vivid green also works to highlight the black areas of the trees themselves that so fascinated the artist. The meaning of the clouds has been a subject of a great deal of speculation. Because it is known Van Gogh was residing in a mental institution at this time, it can be argued that the hectic brushstrokes used to create the effects of the sky and clouds in coiling bands of various blues, whites and aquamarines reflect the restless, confused condition of his mind at the time. While the clouds overhead could easily take on a chaotic effect, “the longer the picture is considered the more consistent it appears as a whole in the multitude of curves that twist and turn and repeat themselves throughout” (National Gallery, 2007). Taken in context with the rest of the painting, these clouds become necessary as a means of providing balance and structure to the work, continuing the line of sight and emphasizing the focal point of the trees. However, the desolation of spirit that Van Gogh felt throughout much of his life, illustrated within the articles of Meyer-Riefstahl (1910), can be found within the lines of the painting. For example, his deep loneliness can be seen in the importance he placed upon pairing the various elements of the work. There are two cypress trees, two bushes, two fields of green and even two fields of gold. His restless energy can also be seen in the continuously curving lines of bushes, grasses, trees, hills, mountains and clouds. Where this isn’t emphasized through his brushstrokes, as in the sky, or in sharply contrasting colors, such as in the transition from wheat to grassy fields, it is brought out with a heavy darker outline that becomes repeated in better defining the shape of the mountains. Despite his loneliness and his increased concern for his own mental state, his love for the countryside is shown in his continued use of vivid colors and heavy use of yellow. Yellow was a color highly associated with happiness and warmth for Van Gogh. Meyer-Riefstahl (1910) specifically mentions Van Gogh’s preference for the color yellow as an important element in decorative style as well as for its associations with the sunshine and enjoyment of life he found in Arles. Knowing his basic color associations, Van Gogh’s heavy use of blue in this scene could be attributed to an overriding sadness at the increasing pace of his mental breakdowns, but the painting itself retains a sense of joy and brightness in its prolific use of vivid yellow-greens to depict not only the foreground field but the mid-ground bushes and other foliage. The twisting form of the mint green bush in the center of the painting takes on a happy, dancing character with the uplifting backdrop of an emerald green bush standing just behind it rather than the wind-tortured stunted shape it could have been with just a slightly different treatment. A similar warming characteristic enters the painting with the strongly flame-inspired shapes of the cypress trees themselves. The darkness at the heart of the trees serves as the darkest point of the painting, naturally drawing the eye to them. A substitution of red rather than green in these trees would enable the exact same construction to be transferred to a painted fireplace without any discrepancies noticed. This impression is further emphasized by the wisp of white cloud/smoke that curls about the tops of these trees. Thus, through his use of color and form, Van Gogh was able to express the chaotic nature of his emotions even as he continued to paint in the vivid colors and style he’d developed. The heavy impasto of the paint on the canvas further serves to heighten the paintings emotive effect, allowing the light to catch and bounce and reflect off of the various planes of paint throughout the image. The theoretically too-busy landscape nevertheless manages to find a settled balance point, defying the critics, while the bright paints countered the darkness within the artist’s mind at the time the painting was made. Although not many during his own time were ready to accept Van Gogh’s achievements and artistic vision as valid, his popularity grew dramatically just after he died. Twenty years after his death, critics were just discovering him, discussing him and illustrating how his vision had spawned an entirely new and imaginative art movement. Works Cited Meyer-Riefstahl, R. “Vincent Van Gogh.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 18, N. 93, (December 1910): 154-157, 160-162. National Gallery of Art. London, 2007. Wallace, Robert. The World of Van Gogh: 1853-1890. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1969. Read More