How Did Van Gogh Change the Way We Look at Art Today

April 25, 2022 Post a Comment

The work of Vincent van Gogh is among the most recognizable art in the world. Completed in the second one-half of the 19th century, the Post-Impressionist'due south collection of drawings and paintings illustrates his creative interests and the evolution of his practice.

While Van Gogh has plant a pregnant amount of fame posthumously, his life was not as untroubled as his characteristically colorful canvases would suggest. From financial struggles to his failing mental health, Van Gogh faced many personal challenges during his career. Eventually, the weight of these problems would pb the artist to take his own life, making his now-beloved body of work particularly poignant.

Today, Van Gogh is known for the distinctive style of his popular paintings. Defined by thick, painterly brushstrokes and a bright colour palette, these luminous landscapes, expressive portraits, and lively yet lifes have come to represent the artist. However, Van Gogh's work did not always feature this familiar aesthetic. Instead, it was shaped over fourth dimension, evolving with each phase of his brusque life.

Van Gogh's Development

Early Years

Vincent van Gogh was built-in on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, the Netherlands. While he would occasionally draw as a child, his creative talent remained largely undiscovered until he decided to pursue painting at 27 years old.

Prior to becoming an artist, Van Gogh explored a number of possible career paths. Having quit school just iii years prior, his uncle secured him a job as a clerk at Goupil & Cie, an international art dealer, when he was simply xvi years erstwhile. A few years later, he was transferred from offices in the Hague to London, where he visited museums regularly and became a lifelong fan of Realist artists like Jean-François Millet.

Young Adulthood

Van Gogh left his job at the firm in 1876. He worked in a schoolhouse and a bookshop before unsuccessfully studying theology in Amsterdam and working as a lay preacher in Belgium. Following these stints, Van Gogh'due south brother, Theo, offered to financially support him and so that he could pursue art.

Afterwards relocating to the netherlands, Van Gogh began taking art lessons from artist Anton Mauve. Inspired by Realism, he became a "peasant painter," producing gritty depictions of life in the countryside. While Theo—now an art dealer in Paris—tried to sell these "peasant paintings," their nighttime hues and unpleasant subject field matter did not entreatment to the French.

To remedy this, Van Gogh decided to join Theo in Paris, where he would piece of work with artist Fernand Cormon and burnish up his palette.

"Utterly Numbed" in Paris

Exposed to the airy art of Impressionist artists like Claude Monet and introduced to fellow Paris-based painters similar Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh soon adopted a lighter and more than colorful approach to painting. It is here that he likewise developed his signature brushwork.

Still, even with this new and modernistic approach, Van Gogh did not find success in the French capital. "It seems to me near incommunicable to be able to work in Paris, unless you have a refuge in which to recover and regain your peace of mind and self-composure," he wrote to Theo in 1888. "Without that, yous'd be leap to go utterly numbed."

He decided to relocate once once more—this fourth dimension to Arles, an idyllic city in the south of France.

The Yellow House

In Arles, Van Gogh'southward paintings became even more colorful and expressive. Surrounded by cute scenery and bathed in the dominicus, Arles seemed like an artist's paradise to Van Gogh. Thus, he dreamt upwardly the idea of a shared studio where he and his contemporaries could paint and rented several rooms in the "Yellow House" to serve this purpose.

Fellow Postal service-Impressionist creative person Paul Gauguin joined Van Gogh in the Yellow House, intending to collaborate. However, their working relationship was short-lived. Subsequently a string of disagreements, Gauguin decided to motion out, prompting the increasingly mentally unstable Van Gogh to cut off part of his ain ear with a knife.

Hospitalization

Van Gogh was admitted to a hospital in Arles the next morning. While he was discharged but a few days later, he recognized the country of his mental health and eventually checked himself into a mental health facility in the nearby Saint-Rémy-de-Provence commune.

While committed, he resumed his artistic exercise, acquiring an actress room as an creative person'southward studio and producing 150 paintings. Eventually, these pieces would be compiled into theSaint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémyseries, which features important works similarSelf-Portrait with a Bandaged Earand The Starry Dark,a nocturnal mural painted through his "iron-barred window."

Ironically, it was during Van Gogh'due south hospitalization that his work began receiving some recognition: six of his paintings were exhibited in Kingdom of belgium, and 10 in Paris. "Your paintings are well placed and await very well," Theo told Vincent about his work in Paris. "Many people came upwardly to ask me to give you their compliments. Gauguin said that your paintings are the primal to the exhibition."

Shortly after this success, Van Gogh left the infirmary and moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris.

Final Days

During the last two months of his life, Van Gogh stayed at the Auberge Ravoux, an inn in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he produced over 80 paintings and 60 sketches. Though he seemed to be making strides as a painter, he remained plagued with financial woes, which undoubtedly contributed to his unsteady mental land.

On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field—the setting of his haunting final painting. He died two days later.

Legacy

A few decades afterward his decease, Van Gogh's850 paintings and i,300 drawings reached international acclaim. Today, he remains one of the well-nigh important figures in the entire history of fine art, celebrated for both his creative practice and his admirable arroyo to life.

"If only nosotros try to alive sincerely," he told Theo in 1878, "it volition become well with us, even though we are sure to feel real sorrow, and great disappointments, and as well volition probably commit bully faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be loftier-spirited, even though 1 makes more than mistakes, than to exist narrow-minded and all likewise prudent. It is skillful to beloved many things, for therein lies the true force, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done."