Beard of the Week LXV: A New Year, A New Art
This week's beard belongs to Dutch-born artist Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853–1890), an artist who, these days, really needs no introduction. This visual extract is from the last of his many self-portraits, painted in September, 1889 when van Gogh was living in Saint-Rémy, France.*
The obvious point of this extracted beard is that almost anyone seeing this would recognize the artist and the work from the colors and the brush work without even needing to see the rest of the instantly identifiable face. Many of van Gogh's paintings are arguably the most universally recognized pieces of Western art.
We've been watching (on DVD) the series of art documentaries written and presented by Simon Schama called "Simon Schama's Power of Art". (This PBS "preview" page describes the series as aired on PBS in 2007, which, oddly, included only eight episodes, leaving out at least the five we watched before getting to "van Gogh". The series was originally produced by BBC in 2005.) Last night we watched the film on Vincent van Gogh. It was quite good.
Schama's dramatic narrative for this van Gogh episode centered around this painting, from van Gogh's last year of life: "Wheat Field with Crows" (1890; source with larger image):
Schama described this painting as the first modern painting. Certainly that's debatable but it's a good thesis for discussion and quite possibly true–although trying to identify a transition like that is probably as pointless as trying to identify the first true human in an evolutionary progression. Nevertheless, the painting is modern in attitude, as we can see now, and van Gogh certainly has a number of artistic heirs among those artists we call "modern".
Schama made a number of points about van Gogh's life and art that I found thought-provoking even as I still try to decide whether I agree with him or not. I think perhaps my agreement, and assessing whether he was right or wrong in his assertions, is not the most important outcome of watching his programs and thinking about what he says.
The usual story that accompanies van Gogh's later paintings, with their brilliant colors and swirling gestures, is that van Gogh was struggling with his insanity and that these images were filtered through his psychotic vision, the products of a deranged mind.
"Bunk!" says Schama. These most iconic paintings were created by van Gogh during his sane periods, his fevered attempts to keep his insanity at bay long enough to achieve his vision of creating a new way for people to see art before his mind was overwhelmed by the insanity. To cap that narrative, Schama tells us van Gogh got there in the nick of time with "Wheat Field with Crows", that he finally succeeded in creating a new way of dealing with art.
I think it's a good interpretation of the art and the historic facts, of which there are many because of Vincent's nearly compulsive letter writing to his brother Theo. The letters show Vincent to be much more thoughtful, and much less deranged, about what he wanted his art to do than a more romantic, insane savage/savant narratives allows.
Shama believes that van Gogh wanted to create images that moved their viewer in a more-than-visceral way, that caused them to experience what he was showing without the middle-man of seeing as such. Well, I'll decide later whether I can accommodate an insubstantial, new-agey concept like that in my own aesthetic hermeneutics, but it's undeniable that modern viewers seem to feel something different when looking at one of van Gogh's paintings, perhaps even experiencing something different from when they look at earlier art. Or, perhaps they're merely hypnotized by the swirls as they think about the guy who lopped of part of his ear for a prostitute–or something like that.
Regardless, it seems to be van Gogh's art these days that is the standard bearer in the battle to prove that art is good and useful for something–we just don't know what that something is. One looks, one feels something churning inside, one doesn't know why or how but one is moved and the images remain in our minds long after.
I don't really know what art is, or what purpose it serves, but that's what art does: it gives us arresting images, and van Gogh's paintings do that magnificently.
———
* This image is from the small but interesting collection on the Wikipedia page called "Self-portraits by Vincent van Gogh".
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Monday, 5 January 2009 at 17.31
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I love Van Gogh's work. Sane or not, it's great stuff. AND, I've always had a thing for redheads!
on Tuesday, 6 January 2009 at 02.04
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The painting is fabulous. But is there a picture of Van Gogh (complete with beard) somewhere?
on Tuesday, 6 January 2009 at 11.59
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Joe, I have to agree with you on the red-heads issue. My mother claimed I got it from her father.
Bill, do you mean other than the self-portraits in the link in the footnote? If it's a photograph you have in mind, it seems to be unknown whether there are any photos of van Gogh as an adult (with a beard). There seems to be one photograph possibility, shown here and discussed some here. This may be the closest we can get.
on Tuesday, 6 January 2009 at 13.22
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It just seemed odd to have a "beard of the week" with no image of the beard in question, that's all.
on Tuesday, 6 January 2009 at 13.33
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Oh, I may be catching on. Is there no picture of van Gogh's beard at the top right for you? There should be a cropped portion of the self-portrait linked in the footnote.