When Will They Plant Sunflowers at Van Gogh Museum Again
A t outset nobody wanted them. Van Gogh painted four images of sunflowers in a pot, and then iii copies that depart in many details from the originals. Together, they amount to an iconic torso of work, representative of his artistic powers at their height. Still the first time one was exhibited in his lifetime it caused uproar.
Having been invited to bear witness work alongside Les Vingt, an avant-garde group of 20 artists in Brussels, in January 1890, Van Gogh consulted his brother Theo as to what he should transport. Theo recommended the sunflowers and explained why. "I've put one of the sunflowers on the mantelpiece in our dining room. It has the effect of a piece of fabric embroidered with satin and gold, it's magnificent." But such richness and beauty, achieved past means of Van Gogh's stark simplicity and strong colour, was not apparent to others. The creative person Henry de Groux threatened to remove his own work from the 1890 exhibition if he institute it in the aforementioned room as "the laughable pot of sunflowers by Mr Vincent". As Van Gogh's artist friends Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac were present when this was said, the evening ended in chaos, and a fight was but narrowly avoided. The next morn, De Groux resigned. To the critic of Le Journal de Charleroi, it was understandable: this artist had been "very justly exasperated" by Van Gogh'south sunflowers.
Today, four of these seven sunflower paintings are in public collections. Two of the four originals tin be seen in London from 25 January, when the one belonging to Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam joins the i in the National Gallery. Anyone who tried to buy Christmas cards concluding year at the National will take been forewarned. Well-nigh half the Christmas merchandise, or then it seemed to this disgruntled company, was covered with sunflowers – fridge magnets, drying-up cloths, mugs, table mats, coasters, diaries, accost books, even spectacle cloths and cases. When Martin Bailey, the Van Gogh expert and journalist, estimates that nigh v million people see Van Gogh's sunflowers every year, he is talking about the oil paintings, not the ubiquitous reproductions they have spawned. These may indeed have damaged the authority and originality of the sunflowers, and removed their "aura" to a mythical region associated with the cult of genius, equally Walter Benjamin described in his famous essay "The Piece of work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", just many visitors will nevertheless flock to the National Gallery in the next few weeks. The appeal of Van Gogh's sunflowers seems more than pervasive than ever.
It volition be further enhanced by Bailey'due south The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln). This is a handsome volume, well organised and beautifully produced, its generous colour illustrations fully supporting the original research. Bailey delivers new insights with an absenteeism of fuss. Fifty-fifty those well versed in Van Gogh will find surprises in it.
Blossom painting has a long history, but no other blossom, Bailey argues, is and so strongly associated with a item creative person as the sunflower is with Van Gogh. He painted his first ones soon afterward arriving in Paris in 1886. The apartment he and Theo shared was in the Rue Lepic, a steep route that leads up to the top of Montmartre. At that time, information technology had three windmills on its summit, allotments on its slopes and, among the vegetables, a scattering of flowers. Initially, sunflowers appeared equally small details in Van Gogh's landscapes. And so in 1887, in a series of 4 oils, he fabricated a close study of them, discovering the Fibonacci spiral in the whirling design of their seeds, and using their cutting heads equally a form of however life.
Flowers had dominated his output during the summer of 1886. Theo reported to their female parent that Vincent was receiving a fresh delivery of flowers every week from friends. 1 of these may have been Ernest Quost, who specialised in flower pictures, lived nearby and had a garden. The piece of work of flower painter Adolphe Monticelli, who died in that year, remained an inspiration to Van Gogh, equally did Edouard Manet's however life of peonies. Nevertheless his dearest of flowers had to connect with his interest in progressive ideas about painting. Having previously known little about impressionism, he had arrived in Paris in fourth dimension to see the 8th (and terminal) impressionist exhibition. He has likewise met leading artists through Theo, an employee of Boussod, Valadon and Cie, ane of the major outlets for modern pictures, at a time when Paris was the centre of the art earth. In Vincent's mind, nature and art were companions. "E'er keep walking a lot and loving nature," he told Theo, "for that's the real manner to learn to understand art amend and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach united states of america to see."
But information technology was in Arles that the bully sunflower catamenia began. And it coincided with his movement into a small yellow house on the border of the square. He got the landlord to repaint it and so that the outside walls became the color of fresh butter and its shutters a rather hideous dark-green. Within, the carmine-brick floors were starting time by white-done walls. It was 5 months before he could motion in, only it inspired his great plan. He told Emile Bernard: "I'thou thinking of decorating my studio with half a dozen paintings of sunflowers."
What pushed him into action was the imminent arrival of Paul Gauguin. Wanting to impress his friend with new work, he started painting on 20 August 1888. He sustained himself with coffee and alcohol, and within six days had more or less completed four pieces. 1 of these was destroyed in the second world war and another, in a private drove, is not well known to the wider public. The other 2 are those that will hang together for a while in London, and they are amidst the about famous paintings in the earth.
"Arranging colours in a painting," Van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil, "to make them shimmer and stand out through their contrasts, that's something like arranging jewels or designing costumes." He had, past this date, been painting for only 7 years, since the age of 27, prior to which he had tried to teach, preach, sell paintings, and so books. But at present he had fanatical concentration and a confident grasp of his medium. He wanted a similar decorative strength to that which he admired in Japanese prints, in which everything is related, not in depth, just to the motion-picture show surface. And he quite often used a "cloissonist" line that, as in cloisonné enamel or stained drinking glass, is used to carve up one colour from another, or to reinforce form and contrast. And then pleased was he with his sunflower paintings that he hung ii in Gauguin's bedroom, to greet him when, after a delay, he arrived on 23 October 1888.
Bailey is an fantabulous guide, not only to Van Gogh's technique, but to the intense 2-month collaboration between the painters that ended in disaster. There were, in Van Gogh'due south words, "excessively electric discussions", from which both men sometimes emerged "with tired minds, like an electrical battery after it'south run downward". Their views about art clashed, and and so did their personalities.
Nevertheless, the final statement, which led to Van Gogh cutting off the lower half of his left ear, may have had an boosted cause. Bailey is the outset to notice the clues provided past a painted envelope, addressed to Vincent, placed at the fore of the table in his Still Life with Drawing Board, Pipe, Onions and Sealing-Wax (1889). The writing on the envelope imitates Theo'due south hand. The postmark shown, with "67" encircled, identifies a postal service office in Identify des Abbesses in Paris, close to Theo'south flat. Another postmark over the stamps – "Jour de l'an" (New year) – was that used in France from late December. And, finally, the "R", an abbreviation for recommandé (registered), suggests that it would have contained the 100-franc allowance that Theo regularly sent his brother. If received in late December, this would have been shortly earlier the tragic cutting of his ear, and information technology would have been shortly after Theo got engaged. News of the engagement would accept triggered in Vincent fright of losing his brother's emotional and fiscal support, both of which were vital to his life and work.
"He felt everything, poor Vincent," said Père Tanguy from whom Van Gogh had bought his paints. He never suggested that the sunflower had any religious meaning for him, though it is customarily associated with humanity's love of God, or Christ. But he did link information technology on 2 occasions to gratitude. He admits in one alphabetic character: "My paintings are … a weep of anguish while symbolising gratitude in the rustic sunflower."
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/how-van-gogh-sunflowers-bloom
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