Sunday Styles: VanGogh a Go Go!

A weekly post on the things I love!

I adore Van Gogh and his dark but lovely paintings! I have always loved the raw quality to his paintings and when I was in Amsterdamn I spent a lot of time at the Van Gogh museum. He led a FASCINATING life...his troubles with depression and mania have always fascinated me. I have always related to him and how he uses art to vent his frustrations, release his emotions and vision a happy future. I think that his raw, rough, thick layers of paint (what many criticized him for) are a part of his genius...his urgent desire to express a chaotic mind, to get it out on paper.

He was never one to follow authority as seen in this model study he did in art school...in his journals he recalls painting in that cigarette out of sheer boredom and to see his teachers reaction.

 

Despite his madness and restless spirit he longed for a healthy normal life as seen in the famous painting of his bedroom in his yellow house in Arles, France. Notice how there are two pillows, two chairs, and two portraits, yet he lived alone.

He painted this picture shortly before he died...the wheat fields about to be harvested and the crows descending on them

 

As most people know Van Gogh cut off his own ear in a fit of madness and presented it to a prostitute. She had a name though. Her name was Rachel, and they had a beautiful love affair. One of the theories as to why he committed such a brutal act was that he was influenced by the bull fighting in Arles commonly done around the same time that he cut off his ear. The matador would slice of the ear of the defeated bull and present it to his lady love. Many historians have remarked on the way that Van Gogh would often identify himself with prostitutes and vagrants, finding himself in some of the darker corners of France...perhaps by cutting off his own ear he was professing his love and identifying with the defeated bull?

 

Is there an artist you like? What do you think  of his work?

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