Vincent van Gogh

“ And Gauguin’s search for a better type of humanity is only one proof the more, if such were needed, of the intimate relationship of art to life, and of the miraculous regularity with which art is always the first to indicate the direction life is taking.
I have shown how, from a negative and futile impressionist, Van Gogh became more and more positive and human in his content, and ever more positive, brave and masterly in his technique, and that this healthy development naturally led him to the only possible goal that lies at the end of the path he had trodden—Man himself. ”

“ It is only his due, that place should be given to a painter who committed suicide after an unhappy life, and who evinced splendid gifts. Vincent Van Gogh, a Dutchman, who, however, had always worked in France, has left to the world some violent and strange works, in which Impressionism appears to have reached the limits of its audacity. ”

“ It is an indispensable helpmeet when one is not quite clear concerning any particular thing: but in regard to Van Gogh, this is not precisely my position. Not so much for my own sake, then, as for the sake of clarity in these questions, in which difficulties are so often smoothed over with empty phrases, it would seem desirable to explain why I speak of “beauty,” “mastery,” “excellence,” in regard to these pictures of what, in my opinion, may be called Van Gogh’s penultimate period, and which all critics, save myself, regard as belonging to his ultimate or post-impressionist period. ”

“ In the canvases of Vincent Van Gogh, Gauguin, Claus, Maufra, d’Espagnat, Liebermann, Harrison, Besnard, Le Sidaner, and many others of the later school, will be found not only colour, rich light, and subtly strong harmonies, but a feeling for beauty of line, composition, rhythm of movement. Our admiration for the great men of 1870 must not blind us to the fact that there are others; the road is not barred, and many of the followers are of great strength. ”

“ His passion is to speak of life itself, and life in its highest manifestation—Man. But, alas, whither on earth must the poor artist turn to-day in order to find that type which would be worthy of his love and of his pictorial advocacy?
Is the hotch-potch, democratic, democratized, hard-working, woman-ridden European a subject to inspire such an artist? True, he can turn to the peasant, as many artists, and even Van Gogh himself, did. ”

“ In about as many years as it takes some painters to learn their palette, Van Gogh had learnt the great and depressing truth at the bottom of all the art of his age—the truth that it was bankrupt, impoverished, democratized, and futile. Divorced from life, divorced from man, and degraded by the great majority of its votaries, art was rapidly becoming the least respected and least respectable of all human functions. ”

“ Van Gogh, however, is more honest. He says working from imagination is an “enchanted land” (page 112) . Although he recognizes the desirability, the superiority, of such methods, he feels that he is not good enough for them. He says: “Others may be more gifted for the painting of abstract studies, and you [Bernard] are certainly one of these, as is also Gauguin.” ”

“ Imagination is surely a faculty that one should develop; for it alone enables us to create a more inspiring and comforting world than we can apprehend by means of a fleeting glance at reality, which is for ever changing and which vanishes like a flash of lightning. How glad I should be one day to try to paint the starry heavens as also a meadow studded with dandelions in the sunlight. But how can one ever hope to succeed in doing these things unless one resolves to stay at home and to work from imagination? ”

“ The highest art, then, must be the art that seeks its meaning in the highest form of life. What is the highest form of life? Van Gogh replies to this question as emphatically and uncompromisingly as every sane and healthy artist has done in all the sanest and healthiest periods of history. He says “Man.”
Now all that he has acquired—art-forms, technique, stored experience, practised observation—is but a means, a formidable equipment which he is deep enough, artist enough, human enough, to wish to lay at the feet of something higher. ”

“ So far, then, Van Gogh’s sole excuse—and it is an adequate one—for having concerned himself wholly with such subordinate things as art-forms and nature transcripts, is that he was a learner. A time comes, however, when in the case of the mature artist, we must take technical competency for granted, and graybeards, as many of the impressionist sculptors and painters grew to be, who continue to concentrate upon technical questions and to regard them as ends in themselves, merely reveal the fact that they never were artists at all. ”

“ He was an artist, not merely either an illustrator or a designer. He was a true artist, therefore his work is ever so new like the moon and flowers; and again old, like the flowers and moon."
"If the so-called post-impressionists could see Kenzan's work!" my friend-artist suddenly ventured to exclaim, "I am sure that Vincent Van Gogh would be glad to have this six-leafed screen of poppy-flowers."
"Really the picture is the soul of the flowers," I said, "but not the external flowers. It is mystic as the flowers are mystic. And imagine Kenzan's attitude when he drew that screen! ”

“ And this revolution of art has seen its heroes and its traitors, its kings, and its usurpers, its romance and its squalor—all beneath the very nose of the layman, all beneath the very walls of his fool’s paradise, without his ever having suspected that something even significant was brewing. ”

“ But to work faithfully and earnestly from Nature is, to my mind, a safe and sure road which must lead to one’s goal.
Sooner or later a love of Nature always meets with response from people interested in Art. Therefore it is the painter’s duty to become absorbed in Nature, to exercise all his intelligence, and put all his feeling into his work so that it may be comprehensible to others. But to work with a view to sell is, in my opinion, not the proper way, neither should we consider the taste of the art-lover—the great painters never did so. ”

“ They last no longer than last nights sunset. Great pictures must be of great subjects. But great subjects can concern themselves with simple things. Their greatness is a sort of veneer with which the artist varnishes the canvas. Take for instance Vincent Van Gogh's, 'Potato-Eaters,' a group of peasants with misshapen faces, eating their supper in the light of a kerosene lamp, or his 'Portrait of a Peasant Woman Rocking a Cradle.' Or Titian's portrait of 'Francis I,' the man with the tremendously long nose. ”

“ The older men, the followers of Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of the world had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, after Cézanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the face of such offerings Cézanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is certainly as far removed from Van Gogh and Gauguin on the one side as he is from Manet and Courbet on the other. ”

“ Delacroix painted a crucified Christ for us, by setting, quite unexpectedly, a light lemon-yellow tone on the canvas. This vivid note of colour lent the picture that indescribable and mysterious charm as of a solitary star in a dark evening sky. Rembrandt works with values in the same way as Delacroix does with colours. ”

“ When our relations with a painter are so strained as to make us say: “If that fellow exhibits any of his pictures by the side of mine, I shall withdraw mine,” and then proceed to abuse him, it seems to me that this is not the proper way to act; for, previous to arriving at such drastic conclusions one should make quite sure, and give the matter careful thought. After due reflection we are almost sure to find—particularly when we happen to be at loggerheads with the artist—that there is as much to criticize in our own work as in the other man’s. He has as much right to exist as we have. ”

“ And, as a matter of fact, are not pink and even yellow and green skies to be found among impressionist landscapes? This is only to show how many things of whose coming one has a presentiment, actually do come to pass in the future. We do not, however, yet stand on the edge of the grave, and we feel that art is greater and longer than our lives. We do not feel moribund, but of little account; and in order to be a link in the chain of artists we pay a heavy price in youth, health, and freedom. ”

“ For art is always the expression of the most sensitive men of an age. They, the artists, are the first, by their movements and by the manner in which they garner their treasure, to prophesy meteorological changes of a nature vast enough to shake even the layman into a state of gasping wonder. ”

“ Never, dear friend, have you been closer to Rembrandt than while painting those studies. It was in Rembrandt’s studio, under the eyes of that incomparable Sphinx, that Vermeer of Delft found that extraordinarily sound technique which was never to be surpassed, and which people are so ardently longing to find to-day. I know, of course, that we are now engaged in the problem of colour, whereas they were concerned with chiaroscuro and values. But what do these slight differences matter when that which is, above all, necessary is to be able to express oneself with vigour and strength? ”

“ But we, you know, live in the midst of complete laisser-aller and anarchy; we artists who love order and symmetry, isolate ourselves and work at introducing a little style into some particular portion of the world.
Puvis knew this very well, and when—clever and honest man that he was—he forgot his Elysian fields, and descended into our age, he painted a very beautiful portrait, “The Jovial Old Man”—a figure of a man sitting in a blue room, reading a yellow covered book, with a glass of water, containing a water-colour brush and a rose, at his side. ”

“ After much tribulation, and the gravest and most depressing doubts, he at last realized this fundamental truth, that art, sound art, cannot be an end in itself, that art for art’s sake is simply the maddest form of individualistic isolation—not to use a less sonorous but more drastic term—and that art can find its meaning only in life, and in its function as a life force. ”

“ It was the last vestige of an historical period in which men had been inspired to express their relationship to life by something higher and greater than both themselves and their art. In fact, it had always flourished in periods when humanity had known of a general direction, a general purpose in life, and of a scheme of life which gave their heart-beats and their breath some deeper meaning than they have at present. ”

“ It is not the extravagant use of paint that makes the painter. But, in order to lend vigour to a piece of ground and to make the air clear, one should not be particular about a tube or two. Often the very spirit of the thing one is painting leads one to paint thinly; at other times the subject, the very nature of the things themselves, compels one to lay the colour on thickly. ”

“ A vast and unprecedented revolution has been convulsing the art-world for almost a century now, a revolution in which men like Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Rodin, and others, have fought like Titans. Who has ever heard of a revolution enduring for almost a century? ”

“ They give us an insight into the art of moulding life, and of being immortal in life itself, and still they are not unrelated to painting. The patron saint of painting, St. Luke—doctor, painter and evangelist, whose device, alas! is an ox—is there to give us hope. But our true and real life is really a humble one; we poor unhappy painters are vegetating beneath the besotting yoke of a craft which is barely practicable on this ungrateful planet, whereon the love of art makes us unable to taste of real love. ”

“ All he felt was simply that craving which all the world will soon be feeling—the craving for the artist-legislator, which is the direst need of modern times. For, in order that fresh life and a fresh type can be given to art, fresh vigour and a fresh type must first be given to life itself. ”

“ We are aware that in the majority of cases all the noise of this art-revolution has been concentrated around questions of technique. The purpose of art was tacitly assumed to be to obtain as faithful a transcript as possible of nature and of reality, pure and simple—not nature linked up with a higher idea, or reality bathed in the atmosphere of a love that transcended mere actualities—but simply nature and reality as they were felt by anybody and everybody. ”

“ But I think that once again you must steep yourself more and more in nature and in the world of artists.
And I would rather see you independent of the Goupils, and dealing with the impressionists on your own account, than this other life of travelling around with expensive pictures belonging to these people. When our uncle was their partner, he got plenty out of it for some years - but look what it cost him.
As for you, your lungs are all right - but, but, but... a year of Gruby first, and then you will see the danger you are now running. ”

“ That is to say, this marvellous artist, who eludes the grasp of that coarse instrument—the neurotic and confused brain of modern man—created neither statues nor pictures nor even books; he says so himself quite majestically—he created real living men, immortals. ”