SparkNotes: Vincent van Gogh: Study & Essay
Vincent van Gogh
Quiz
Study Questions
Discuss the mythic relationship between Vincent van Gogh's artistic/creative  drive and his delicate psychological condition. Is one necessary for the other,  or are they mutually exclusive? Describe a possible cause and effect scenario,  using the artist's own words.
Few artists have created a body of work that is so inseparable from the facts  and myths of the artist's life and persona. Van Gogh's unbridled passion and  ecstatic contemplation of life, nature, and art, his intense spirituality and  religious zeal, his generous, ardent, and sincere disposition, and especially,  his violent and enigmatic illnesses and suicide at age thirty-seven have all  contributed to powerful and often inaccurate myths that can obscure a clear  understanding of the important painter. The months he spent in Arles, St. Remy,  and Auvers allowed Vincent to paint at a near frenzied pace, until he felt  "broke and crazy" (L 513, July 1888). His last two and a half years of life  comprised the most prolific and successful period of his career. However, the  stress and sheer physical and mental exertion of this obsessive output was too  much for his encroaching illnesses, and his condition gradually worsened as his  painting became increasingly facile, formally daring, and accomplished.
It is easy, but ultimately misguided, to view and interpret van Gogh's painting  strictly in light of his psychological condition–the strong evidence of  his letters indicates that he only worked during lucid periods. He was able to  discuss his work on a superior intellectual and rational level with his brother  and his friends. More accurate than the notion that his art was produced by his  psychological crises is the understanding of his art as the catalyst for his  psychological collapse. Vincent himself voiced sentiments of regret at the  physical and mental disintegration that he believed were the fault of his  obsessive creativity: "The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, by so much  more I am an artist.... [A] kind of melancholy remains within us when we  think that one could have created life at less cost than creating art" (L 514,  July 1888). In other words, we should not overestimate the effect van Gogh's  breakdowns had on his art, but instead untangle the myths in order to recognize  and concentrate on a profound talent tempered by a prodigious, exhausting, and  ultimately, debilitating creative effort.
Discuss the influence that Impressionism and Japanese prints had on van Gogh's  work, specifically during the Paris period. Did Impressionism permanently alter  his sense of color and form, or were the influences that led to his mature style  more complex?
Although he was still an outsider (due to his non-French nationality, his  unallied work, and his unpredictable bipolarity), Vincent finally felt part of a  community of artists during his time in Paris. He was able to trade paintings  with many of the Impressionists, and a Parisian dealer even took some of his  work. The influence of the Impressionists's color theories and use of light,  along with Vincent's rising interest in Japanese prints, brought Vincent closer  to his mature style as he tried a pseudo-Pointillist approach to painting in  discreet, regular, short brushstrokes in heavy impasto and explored vibrant  color, "seeking oppositions... to harmonize brutal extremes... trying to  render intense color and not a gray harmony" (L 470).
By August 1886, Vincent had left Cormon's studio because of Cormon's refusal of  the new color theories and his insistence on painting plaster casts rather than  live nude models. Vincent painted atmospheric cityscapes (like View from  Vincent's Window and The Roofs of Paris) and a remarkable series of  flowers in vases (like Vase with Poppies, Daisies, Cornflowers, and  Peonies and Vase with Gladioli) to discipline his discovery of  powerful color and Impressionist/neo-Impressionist theory. His Paris style is a  unique amalgam of Impressionism and his own mature style of proto-  Expressionism; van Gogh was influenced by Impressionism and the flattened,  linear forms of Japanese prints (which he collected), but also by the old Dutch  masters. His art was inherently synthetic, combining disparate influences to  create a completely unique vision of stylized representation that went far  beyond the circumscribed confines of Impressionism. Even in his Parisian self- portraits and portraits (particularly Portrait of Pere Tanguy), he began  to distort and exaggerate form to express the overwhelming turmoil of his  emotional life. Vincent experimented with Impressionist theory and technique,  absorbed what he wanted, and then rejected the rest. His conception of art was  fundamentally different from the Impressionists'–his paintings record the  immediacy of emotional, spiritual, and psychological impact with the subject  filtered through the artist, as opposed to the purely optical/perceptual  recording of the Impressionists. His mature style bears little resemblance to  Impressionism–the color, form, heavily modeled line, paint handling, and  texture is diametrically opposed to Impressionism in its intensity,  nonobjective, unnatural choice of colors and the violent, forceful attack of  line and form.
What influence did van Gogh's radical stylistic departures from the Parisian  avant-garde's languages of Impressionism and post-Impressionism have on the  development of modernist painting?
A brilliant colorist who took Gauguin's subjective color choices a step further  to his characteristically acidic, imaginative, overwhelmingly intense hues, Van  Gogh's tremendous influence on the development of Expressionism is due to his  unique skill as a draughtsman and his immediately recognizable heavy, sculptural  line. He wrote to his brother, "Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I  have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily in order to express myself  forcibly... to exaggerate the essential and to leave the obvious vague"  (Arnason 85). For instance, in his nightmarish masterpiece The Night  Cafe, 1888, he sought "to express in red and green the terrible passions of  human beings" (Schapiro 26). Van Gogh's revolutionary approach to painting had a  strong influence on the next generation of artists, beginning with Matisse and  the French Expressionists, also known as the Fauves. He offered these early  modernists a powerful alternative to the avant-garde centrality of delicate  Parisian Impressionism and post-Impressionism. His innovative and radical use of  unnatural color, his angular, heavy line, his compression of three-dimensional  space into two-dimensional discreet pictorial elements (like brushstroke and  pattern), and particularly his stylized distortion and often-groteque  exaggeration of reality all appealed to the Expressionist artists. The German  Expressionists, especially the Die Brucke group, considered themselves the heirs  to van Gogh, whom they esteemed the premier genius of modern art. Van Gogh's  penetrating and revealing portraits were of special interest to the young  Germans' and Austrians' high regard for the psychoanalytical theories of Freud.  Even Picasso was not immune to van Gogh's formidable influence. Picasso's pre- Cubist work demonstrates his knowledge of van Gogh's painting, and the Vincent's  spontaneity and forceful immediacy affected even Picasso's transitional Cubist  work in the era of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Joan Miro admitted that his  early work was indebted to van Gogh. His influence reappeared after WWII with  Abstract Expressionism, particularly the work of fellow Dutchman Willem de  Kooning, and the respectful van Gogh studies and tribute paintings of the  British neo-Expressionist painter Francis Bacon. Even today, van Gogh's  stylistic syntax is evident in neo-Expressionist painting in Europe and the  United States.
Essay Topics
Discuss van Gogh's complex relationship with his family, particularly his  brother Theo. To what extent did Vincent distance himself from his family and/or  embrace his heritage?
To what extent did van Gogh's nationality influence his life, his art, and his  outsider status? Is his nationality crucial to his artistic development? Does it  matter that he wasn't French like the rest of his avant-garde colleagues?
Discuss van Gogh's obsession with portrait painting in light of his life and his  personality. Why did the portrait fascinate him so, especially towards the end  of his life? What did he mean when he said he wanted his portraits to be like  "apparitions"? Cite specific examples of work.
Discuss the development of the landscape in van Gogh's art, from his early work  in The Netherlands through his transcendent final double-square landscapes from  Auvers? Does van Gogh ever really achieve abstraction with his landscapes?
What role did religion, spirituality, and faith play in van Gogh's life and art?   Discuss the evolution of his faith, from childhood to death, citing specific  works if possible.
Why do you think van Gogh was so preoccupied with peasant portraiture and  documentation for so much of his life, even though he himself came from a  decidedly middle-class family?  How does this preoccupation relate to his ideas  about religion, place, and the value of life?
Do you think van Gogh's psychological troubles, and/or his spiritual and  artistic life, was really triggered by his first failed love affair with Eugenie Loyer in London? What part did romance play in van Gogh's life and work?   Discuss his view of women, in light of his early interest in Michelet's writings  as well as his depiction of women in his art? Cite specific paintings as  examples.