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| Van Gogh - Self Portrait with Grey Felt Hat (1887) - Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Photo: Cat Bauer
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(Venice, Italy) If you want to get up close and personal with the enigmatic Vincent van Gogh, The Colors of Life at the San Gaetano Cultural Center in Padua gives you the opportunity.With 82 works by Van Gogh himself, and several by Japanese artist Hiroshige -- a major source of the artist's inspiration -- as well as paintings by contemporaries like Pissarro and Seurat, it is the largest Italian exhibition ever dedicated to the Dutch maestro.
Unfortunately, there is not one word of English in the exhibition, nor
is there an English-language audio guide or tours in English. Therefore,
to fully appreciate what The Colors of Life has to offer, if you do not understand Italian, you must do your own homework. It is utter laziness and an insult to visitors on the part of an exhibition that hopes to attract an international crowd. But Van Gogh is so riveting, he speaks to us through the ether without words.
Here is some very brief background to help you get started.
BACKSTORY:
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in Zundert, a village in the south of the Netherlands, the oldest surviving child of a reputable family. The first-born son, also named Vincent Willem van Gogh -- and also born, incredibly, on March 30 the previous year -- was stillborn. His parents would go on to have five more children.
Vincent would not decide to become an artist until he was 27-years-old,
but in just over a decade, he produced 2,100 works of art. The prolific genius was only 37-years-old when he allegedly shot himself on July 27, 1890, dying 30 hours later.
Van Gogh had a complicated relationship with both his parents, to whom respectability was of upmost importance. His mother, Anna, came from an affluent family in The Hague. She was an avid gardener and amateur artist whose father was a "Royal Bookbinder." Vincent's father, Theodorus or "Dorus," was a parson in the Dutch Reformed Church in Zundert, a predominately Catholic town, who spent long hours alone in his study.
The Van Gogh family was extremely literate, reading aloud to each other in the evenings, and Vincent remained a keen reader all his life. His mother encouraged her children's artistic pursuits, teaching them to draw and paint, determined to cultivate her family's social status. Neither parent was particularly affectionate, but did sacrifice for their children and were concerned for their welfare. Vincent was a shy, lonely, rebellious and eccentric child, causing much disruption in the family, but adored by his younger brother, Theo. At age 11, his insubordination caused his parents to send Vincent to a boarding school.
Vincent's parents had met when Anna's much younger sister, Cornelia, married Dorus's older brother, also named Vincent, but known as "Uncle Cent," a wealthy art dealer who would go on to own an elegant townhouse on the outskirts of Paris.
One more time because it's important: At the time they married, Cent and Cornelia both had unmarried siblings teetering on the edge of spinsterdom -- Uncle Cent was the older brother of Vincent Van Gogh's father, Dorus. Aunt Cornelia was the much younger sister of Vincent Van Gogh's mother, Anna. Dorus was a couple years younger than Anna.
Keeping it all in the family, Vincent Van Gogh's father, Dorus, age 29, married his mother, Anna, age 31, on May 21, 1851. They began their life together in the small parsonage in Zundert. Uncle Cent would go on to retire early and buy a mansion complete with his art collection in a nearby village. Vincent's aunt and uncle were childless, and played an influential role in Van Gogh's life. In contrast to Vincent's stern parents, Uncle Cent and Auntie Cornelia were full of charm and knew how to entertain.
When Vincent was 16-years-old, Uncle Cent gave him the opportunity to carry on in his footsteps with a position as an apprentice in The Hague branch of the Parisian art dealership, Groupil & Cie, of which Cent was a partner. There, Vincent drifted to the dark side of life, drinking and frequenting brothels. He did not have the personality to deal with the public, but had an encyclopedic memory of Groupil's inventory.
Vincent was transferred to London, then Paris, where he completely flipped and transformed his carnal desires into a an obsession with religion and the Bible. He began his lifelong fascination with nature and divinity. He became frustrated with Groupil's wealthy clientele, who wanted fashionable art, not work with meaning and quality. Vincent
learned a lot about art and artists, but
increasingly had issues with the dealership's commodification of art,
seeing his life suited more for the ministry, not as a merchant -- though ironically he would spend much of his short life trying to sell his artwork, without success. During Christmas 1875, Goupil's busiest time of year, Vincent went home
to Holland without permission, and was given his notice when he returned to Paris in January.
Van Gogh then took positions in a variety of professions, working as a teacher, a minister's assistant and in a bookshop. As Vincent grew older he became increasingly more religious, deciding to become a pastor, but failed the theology entrance exam at the University of Amsterdam. In January 1879, at the age of 25, he became a missionary in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium, all the while looking at life through the distinct eyes of an artist.
In 1880, four years after leaving the art dealership and after much soul-searching, Vincent van Gogh decided to devote his life to art, which he considered his spiritual calling.
Much of our knowledge about Van Gogh's life and thoughts comes from the hundreds of letters between him and his younger brother, Theo, who financially supported and encouraged Van Gogh throughout his life. Theo was four years younger than Vincent, and died six months after his older brother at the age of 33. Theo was a successful and respected art dealer, working, as Vincent had done before, for Goupil & Cie in Paris. He introduced Dutch and French contemporary art to the public, and was instrumental in the popularity of Impressionists like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. Theo deeply believed in the talent of Vincent Van Gogh when no one else did.
THE EXHIBITION
Curator Marco Goldin has divided the exhibition into seven different sections, kicking it off with Van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon
as seen through the eyes of the artist, Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Then it weaves its way through
Van Gogh's life in chronological order and where he was based when he
created his singular works of art. By structuring the exhibition in this manner, we see Van Gogh grow as an artist, and the dramatic impact his environment had upon his work.
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Study for ‘Portrait of Van Gogh IV’(1957) Tate, London |
1. The painter as a hero. Francis Bacon looks at Van Gogh
Curator Marco Goldin does not think that Van Gogh was crazy. He sees Van Gogh as a modern hero who had a mission to complete, and sacrificed everything to do so. Goldin would like the exhibition to speak of the painter as a hero through his works and meetings with fate.
In the summer of 1888, during his time in Arles, France, Van Gogh painted a small canvas entitled The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, which was later housed in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Magdeburg, Germany. The painting was destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. The painting of the solitary artist -- Van Gogh himself -- walking under the sun on his way to work in the countryside survived only in photographs.
At the end of 1956, Francis Bacon pinned the image of the destroyed painting to the wall of his studio. He wanted to pay homage to the Dutch artist who had so inspired him, even traveling to that same road in the south of France. The exhibition opens with three of Bacon's paintings of the artist on the road to Tarascon.
Goldin says:
"Bacon desired to represent Vincent as a wayfarer in constant movement, making the most of that cinematographic angle of the images that made the figure emerge as a silhouette almost burnt by the Provencal sun..."
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| The Diggers (after Millet) (1880) - © Kröller-Müller Museum |
2. The formative years. From the mines of Marcasses to Etten
By January 1879, Van Gogh had taken a post as a missionary in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium, but was dismissed by church officials for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood" after giving up his lodgings to a homeless person and moving to a small hut where he slept on straw. He moved between Brussels, the mines and his parents' home in Etten, where he landed for an extended stay, honing his talent as an artist. There, he fell in love with his older cousin, who refused to marry him.
The section opens with Miners in the Snow and The Diggers, a figure study that Vincent drew after the original by Jean-François Millet, an artist he greatly admired. The drawings are rare surviving examples of Van Gogh's early efforts from September and October 1880. The section continues with Van Gogh's production as an artist-in-training during his time spent in Etten in 1881 with his family.
On September 24, 1880, Vincent wrote to Theo:
"You can see then that I'm working like mad, but for the moment it isn't giving very heartening results. But I have hopes that these thorns will bear white flowers in their time, and that this apparently sterile struggle is nothing other than a labor of giving birth. First pain, then joy afterwards."
After a violent quarrel with his father on Christmas when Vincent refused to attend church services, he took off that same day to The Hague to try to sell paintings and meet with Anton Mauve, a revered and successful artist married to one of Van Gogh's cousins.
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Sien with Child on Her Lap (1882) - Kröller-Müller Museum - Photo: Cat Bauer
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3. Sien and the time at The Hague. Drawings and the first paintings
Van Gogh arrived at The Hague at the end of December 1881, and spent three weeks with Anton Mauve in his studio, who encouraged the budding artist, saying "I always thought you were a bloody bore, but now I see that this isn't so," a comment that delighted Van Gogh. Mauve lent him money to rent and furnish a studio. Van Gogh and Mauve would have a falling out after Van Gogh set up domestic arrangements with Sien Hoornik, a former prostitute who had a five-year-old daughter and another child on the way. Sien, her mother and daughter posed for him, and some of these haunting portraits are included in this section.
In September 1883, Van Gogh left for Drenthe, a province in in the northeastern part of the Netherlands, and stayed there for three months. He was enchanted with the landscape which had yet to be touched by modern industrial society.
From a letter to Theo, November 5, 1883:
My dear Theo,
What I think is the best life, oh without even the slightest shadow of a doubt, is a life made up of long years of being in touch with nature out of doors -- and with the something on high -- unfathomable, 'awfully Unnameable,' because one can't find a name for it -- above that nature. Be a peasant -- be, if that were fitting at the present time, a village clergyman or schoolmaster -- be, and given the present time that's the form that seems to me to be the most fitting, be a Painter -- and in doing so as a person you will, after that spell of outdoor life and manual work, as a person you will, in the end and in the passage of years, gradually become something better and deeper. I firmly believe this.
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| Loom with Weaver (April/May 1884) - © Kröller-Müller Museum |
4. The years at Nuenen. Between weavers and peasants
In December 1883, Van Gogh arrived in Nuenen where his parents had moved the year before, his father taking a position as a pastor in the vicarage.Van Gogh would stay there until 1885, fascinated by the link between the peasant and the land. He considered "the work of the peasant as the purest and most authentic incarnation of the human condition." This period of Van Gogh's life consisted of dark earth tones, not the vivid colors that we think of today.
On March 26, 1885, Vincent's father died of a heart attack. In August, Van Gogh's work was publicly displayed for the first time in the windows of Leur, an art dealer in The Hague. After one of Vincent's young sitters became pregnant, the village priest forbade his parishioners to sit for him.
In November, Van Gogh moved to Antwerp in Belgium, living in poverty, buying Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts -- which he incorporated into his own work -- and studying color theory in museums, particularly Peter Paul Rubens. By February 1886, he was so poor that he could not pay his rent, so off he dashed to his old stomping grounds in Paris after becoming intrigued by the art of the Impressionists that Theo had described in his letters.
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| Montmartre dietro il Moulin de la Galette (1887) - Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam |
5. Paris, oh dear. Van Gogh and modern art
Theo was not expecting his brother, who ended up sharing his living quarters. Theo brought Vincent into the current art scene, which caused a major shift in the colors of his palette. He encountered Toulouse-Lautrec, Bernard, Pissarro, Seurat, and Gaugin, who became his friend. Some of the work of Van Gogh's contemporaries are included in this section.
The year 1887 sees the birth of modern art in Van Gogh as he experimented with the new techniques he had encountered in the Parisian environment, as well as his continuing fascination with Japanese art. He developed his own bold, distinct style. But after two years of living in the city, he longed to once again be surrounded by nature and the countryside. On February 19, 1888, he left for Arles in Provence, the south of France.
The Sower (1888) © 2020 Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands
Photo Rik Klein Gotink, Harderwijk
6. A decisive year. 1888 Van Gogh at Arles
In the nearly 15 months that Vincent would stay in Arles, he created 200 paintings, more than 100 drawings and watercolors, and wrote 200 letters, mostly to his brother, Theo. After corresponding with Theo, the brothers agreed that they would present Paul Gaugin with the option of joining Van Gogh in Arles. Gaugin agreed, and Vincent prepared the Yellow House, which he was renting, for his arrival. In August, while he was waiting for Gaugin, Van Gogh painted his Sunflowers masterpiece.
Gaugin arrived on October 23, 1888, and the two painted together. The only painting that Gaugin completed in Arles was The Painter of Sunflowers, a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. As often happened with Van Gogh when he lived under the same roof with fellow human beings, the relationship began to deteriorate. By December, the two had an altercation, resulting in Vincent famously severing his left earlobe with a razor, bandaging the wound, wrapping the earlobe in paper and delivering it to a 17-year-old cleaning girl named Gaby at a brothel frequented by him and Gaugin.
Van Gogh ended up in the hospital with no recollection of what he had done. On December 24, Theo rushed to board a night train from Paris to Arles after just having proposed marriage to Johanna Bonger -- a woman who would become crucial to our knowledge of Van Gogh today by preserving, editing and translating the letters between her husband and his brother. Theo arrived by his brother's side on Christmas Day. Gaugin fled the scene, fearing the sight of him would further agitate Vincent.
Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House, but 30 townspeople petitioned to have "the redheaded madman" institutionalized. In May 1889, Van Gogh voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He did not attend his brother's wedding to Johanna in Amsterdam the previous month.
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Landscape with Wheat Sheaves and Rising Moon (1889) © 2020 Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands
Photo Rik Klein Gotink, Harderwijk |
7. Of moons and clouds. Van Gogh and the end of his journey
Van Gogh stayed at Saint-Rémy from May 1889 through May 1890, producing 150 paintings and hundreds of drawings. The clinic, its garden and the view from his window became the main subjects of his paintings. His art changed again with the application of thick layers of paint, losing the intense colors of the Arles period.
After a year of confinement, the painter was ready to once again continue his hero's journey, and come face to face with his fate. Despite his prolific output, Van Gogh was not satisfied. On May 1, 1890, he wrote Theo:
"The unfortunate thing is that the people here are too curious, idle and ignorant about painting for it to be possible for me to practice my profession... Ah, if I'd been able to work without this bloody illness! How many things I could have done, isolated from the others, according to what the land would tell me. But yes -- this journey is well and truly finished. Anyway, what consoles me is the great, the very great desire that I have to see you again, you, your wife and your child, and so many friends who have remembered me in my misfortune, as, for that matter, I don't stop thinking of them, either."
Vincent left Saint-Rémy and moved to the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise to be closer to Theo and Dr. Paul Gachet, an amateur painter and doctor who had treated several other artists, recommended by Camille Pissarro. Van Gogh did not place much faith in Gachet, writing, "I've seen Dr. Gachet, who gave me the impression of being rather eccentric, but his doctor's experience must keep him balanced himself while combating the nervous ailment from which it seems to me he's certainly suffering at least as seriously as I am."
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Wheat Stacks under a Cloudy Sky (1889) © 2020 Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands
Photo Rik Klein Gotink, Harderwijk |
In the last two months of his life, Van Gogh painted some 80 works, an average of more than one a day. Chestnut trees in blossom, landscapes and houses, portraits -- including two of Dr. Gachet -- and wheat fields are some of the subjects that he visited. It is believed that Wheat Field with Crows painted in July 1890 is his last painting. A similar canvas painted the year before, Wheat Stacks under a Cloudy Sky, while he was at Saint-Rémy is included in the exhibition.
On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest, although some credence has been given to a theory that he was accidentally shot by a group of teenagers with whom he had been drinking. In any event, he got himself back to inn where he was staying around 9PM. Dr. Gachet was notified, and dressed the wound, saying that he still hoped he could save Vincent's life, to which Van Gogh replied "Then I'll have to do it over again." Theo arrived by train the following afternoon, and spent the last hours of beloved brother's life by his side.
Vincent Willem van Gogh was pronounced dead at 1:30AM, July 30, 1890. Theo later wrote: "One of his last words was, 'I wish I could pass away like this,' and his wish was fulfilled. A few moments and it was over. He had found the rest he could not find on earth..."
Vincent Van Gogh had accomplished his mission, leaving behind more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of 1,100 drawings and sketches and about 900 paintings for us to ponder. Most of his best-known works were produced during the final two years of his life. The modern hero had sacrificed everything to bring humankind closer to forces of heaven.
Theo would die six months after his brother on January 25, 1891 at the age of 33, leaving Johanna a widow with an infant son named Vincent and hundreds of letters Vincent van Gogh had written to Theo, which she transformed into the libretto of the visual opera created by Vincent van Gogh.
Van Gogh - The Colors of Life opens on October 10, 2020 and runs through April 11, 2021 at the San Gaetano Cultural Center in Padua, about a half hour outside Venice by train. The pleasant walk to the cultural center is about 15 minutes, with the chance to visit the newly-restored gardens at Giardini Giotto. If you are clever, you can combine a visit to the Van Gogh exhibition with a stop at the
Scrovegni Chapel, which is on the way, to see Giotto's magnificent frescoes, which I wrote about back in July 2017 in a post entitled
The Most Powerful Kiss in Art.
Reservations and more information, some of it in English, is on the site of
Linea d'Ombra, curator Marco Goldin's global management company for art exhibitions. Be warned that the English translation of the exhibition's sections has not been updated accurately to include
The Colors of Life in its present form. Much of what I've written in this post is the result of my own research. An excellent resource, of course, is the
Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. You can find all
Van Gogh’s letters with annotations on their site.
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
