Vincent

“It’s only in front of the easel while painting that I feel a little of life.” Vincent Van Gogh

I titled this post ‘Vincent’ because that's how Van Gogh signed his paintings. After spending several hours in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I feel like I know him well enough to make small talk. “Good morning, Vincent. How’s the new painting?” “I’m satisfied with the sketches. It’s time to lay down some gesso.”

An episode of Dr. Who once made Van Gogh seem like the most popular painter of all time. It sounded crazy until I got to the museum. It’s one of several in a multi-museum complex that includes the Rijksmuseum with paintings by the Dutch masters and another dedicated to Dutch history. It’s also chilly, pouring rain, and the ticket queue is outside and uncovered. Yet there's a half-hour wait for the Van Gogh museum.

Is the interest in Van Gogh because of his paintings, or because of the seemingly tragic details of his life? Having seen photographs of his work, I was inclined to think the later. Now I’m standing in a room full of the artist’s self-portraits, most of them from 1887. Despite the non-representational style, his eyes seem to look back at me. I’m looking at a real human being. I’m waiting for him to say, “Hi. How’s it going?” And the famous paintings, which I'll get to in a minute, are just as affecting.

In the middle of the room, three portraits merit individual glass cases. Two of them you’ve seen. They’re the famous portraits of Vincent in his straw hat. In the third, he wears a suit. This is the one I think is the most compelling, the one I can't stop looking at and the one that doesn't play as well in photo on a computer screen—and the one I can't find in the gift shop.

One floor up are paintings from Van Gogh’s early period. The most striking painting here, one considered an early masterpiece is called The Potato Eaters. It depicts a peasant family eating diner. Absent are the bright colors we associate with Van Gogh, but even at this stage his style is seems completely his own.

The next floor shows what happens when Vincent arrives in Paris. He sees the impressionists for the first time. He sees Japanese block prints, then creating a stir in European art circles.  He get’s access to the latest technology in paints and the vibrant colors that were then newly available. By the time he moves to Arles, France in 1888 his mature style is emerging.

The top floor contains his most famous paintings, his mature style. I wonder at Vincent's ability to evoke such beauty from such humdrum subjects. His most famous paintings are subjects he had at hand. The Yellow House shows the same window we see in Bedroom in Arles. In the bedroom, hanging above Vincent's bed is the yellow straw hat worn in his self-portraits.

Non-representationalists (particularly the more abstract ones) are often accused of having no talent. Some might point to the uneven perspective of Van Gogh's paintings and dismiss him as an amateur. Yet the sketches he made while planning a painting show the same views with better perspective. An electronic display overlays three images he made of a view from his Paris window. The positions match closely. This suggests he knew exactly what he was doing and that he was deliberately distorting. More importantly, the distortions when seen in person just seem right.

I reach the last painting in the museum and realize I haven't seen Starry Night. It’s Van Gogh’s most famous painting, yet it’s not in his eponymous museum. For that I have to go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Without even realizing it my guess about Starry Night's size had grown in the ten weeks since Amsterdam. I shouldn't have been surprised that the painting was half the size I expected. Vincent couldn't sell small paintings. Why would he make them larger?

I noticed something again, something that first occurred to me in Amsterdam. The paintings I knew about, the ones I knew from photographs, weren't the ones that affected me. The paintings that impressed me in person seemed lesser in photographs.
In person, I loved the formal self-portrait. I loved the paintings of where he lived. And Starry Night looks much better on a screen or a page than it does in person.