UNIT   4

short video about modern art

  VINCENT VAN GOGH

*SONG BY DON MC LEAN :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

*PAINTINGS BY VINCENT VAN GOGH

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vincent-van-Gogh

*AMSTERDAM MUSEUM 

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en

* More information

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/all-stories/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-van-goghs-self-portraits

*

 * In his Own Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hXMuK5NQEA

The Starry Night

   The Red Vineyard

     Birth Year : 1853

     Death Year : 1890

     Country of Origin : Netherlands

  Vincent van Gogh was born in Zundert, Holland.                                                             

 The son of a pastor, was brought up in a   religious and cultured atmosphere 

 that Vincent found  appealing and to which

 he would be drawn to a certain extent later
in his life. His sister described him as a serious
and introspective child, highly emotional and
lacking self-confidence.
At age 16 Vincent started to work for an art
dealer in The Hague. His four years younger
brother Theo, with whom Vincent cherished a
life-long friendship, would join the company
later. This friendship is amply documented in a
vast amount of letters they sent each other.
They provide a lot of insight into the life of the
painter, and show him to be a talented writer
with a keen mind. Theo would support Vincent
financially throughout his life.
In 1880, Vincent van Gogh followed his brother
Theo’s suggestion and took up painting in
earnest. For a brief period Vincent took painting
lessons from Anton Mauve in the  Hague. Although
Vincent and Anton soon split over
divergence of artistic views, influences
of the Hague School of painting would
remain in Vincent’s work, notably in
the way he played with light and in the
looseness of his brush strokes. However
his usage of colours, favouring dark
tones, set him apart from his teacher.
In spring 1886 Vincent van Gogh went
to Paris, where he moved in with his
brother Theo; they shared a house on
Montmartre. Here he met the painters
Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Bernard,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul
Gauguin. He discovered impressionism
and liked its use of light and color, more
than its lack of social engagement (as
he saw it). Especially the technique
known as pointillism (where many small
dots are applied to the canvas that
blend into rich colors only in the eye of
the beholder, seeing it from a distance)
made its mark on Van Gogh’s own style. It
should be noted that Van Gogh is regarded as a
post-impressionist, rather than an impressionist,
meaning that the artist uses color and lines to
express an emotional response to the subject
rather than to describing it accurately.


Vincent was an unstable and volatile man,
well known as the ‘tortured artist’. His nervous
temperament made him a difficult companion
and night-long discussions combined with
painting all day undermined his health. He
decided to go south to Arles where he hoped
his friends would join him and help found a
school of art. Gauguin did join him but with
disastrous results. Near the end of 1888, an
incident led Gauguin to ultimately leave Arles,
after a number of arguments with Vincent. Van
Gogh pursued him with an open razor, was
stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a
portion of his own ear lobe off.
Van Gogh then began to alternate between
fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the
asylum in Saint-Remy suffering with depression.
He spent much time in the asylum, though it was
later believed that he suffered from epilepsy.
While there he painted some 150 paintings. His
most famous work The Starry Night was painted
while staying in the asylum.The only painting
he sold during his lifetime, ‘The Red Vineyard’,
was created in 1888. In May 1890 Vincent van
Gogh left the clinic and went to the physician
Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris,
where he was closer to Theo, who had recently
married. Here van Gogh created the portrait of
the melancholic “Dr. Gachet”. In two months
Van Gogh was averaging one painting per day.
His depression aggravated. On July 27 of the
same year, at the age of 37, after a fit of painting
activity, van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He
died two days later, with Theo at his side, who
reported his last words as "The sadness will
last forever". He was buried at the cemetery of
Auvers-sur-Oise; Theo unable to come to terms
with his brother's death died 6 months later and
was buried next to him.
In a short period of ten years Van Gogh made
approximately 900 paintings. Van Gogh's finest
works were produced in less than three years
in a technique that grew more and more
impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and
intense color, in surface tension, and in the
movement and vibration of form and line.
Dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and
emotional, for the artist was completely
absorbed in the effort to explain either his
struggle against madness or his comprehension
of the spiritual essence of man and nature.
Van Gogh's influence on expressionism,
fauvism and early abstraction was enormous,
and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th century art.

Vincent’s brother’s wife collected
Vincent’s paintings and letters after his death
and dedicated herself to getting his work the
recognition it deserved. It would not take long
before his fame grew higher and higher. Today,
several paintings by Van Gogh rank among the
most expensive paintings in the world. On March
30, 1987 Van Gogh's painting “Irises” was sold
for a record $53.9 million at Southeby's, New
York. His Portrait of Doctor Gachet was sold for
$82.5 million at Christie's, thus establishing a
new price record.
As mentioned earlier, Vincent van Gogh was
also a passionate letter writer. Of the countless
letters he wrote to his friends and family
more than 800 have been preserved, as well as
approximately 80 letters that he received. In one
of his letters, he supports that “ There are so many
people, especially among our pals, who imagine
that words are nothing. On the contrary, don’t
you think, it’s as interesting and as difficult to
say a thing well as to paint a thing.”

Van Gogh
to Emile Bernard,19 April 1888.

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