“Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter’s life… looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star…”
— Vincent Van Gogh
“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere” — Van Gogh (via 0rgasms)
“The inspiration for Spring 2012 stemmed from Van Gogh’s brushwork within his paintings. Upon seeing a sketch made in 1845 by Lord Rosse of the Whirlpool galaxy, we became interested in the connection found between images of the cosmos and Van Gogh’s artistic style. This sketch was done 44 years before Van Gogh’s Starry Night and there is a direct visual connection between the swirls of this galaxy and Van Gogh’s stars.” - Kate and Laura Mulleavy
“The way I see it, life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things.”
“…to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all.Certainly, the most popular, great painter of all time, the most beloved. His command of color the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty.Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world…no one had ever done it before. Perhaps, no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.” - [x]
He painted what he felt, not what he saw. People didn’t understand, to them it seemed childlike and crude. It took years for them to recognize his actual technique. To see the way his brush strokes seemed to make the night sky move. Yet, he never sold a painting in his lifetime, he refused to conform his ideals to popular taste. He refused to compromise his integrity
Sunflowers, 1888
Vincent van GoghSunflowers was painted during a rare period of excited optimism, while Van Gogh awaited the arrival of his hero, the avant-garde painter Paul Gauguin. The lonely and passionate Vincent had moved to Arles, in the South of France, where he dreamed of setting up a community of artists with Gauguin as its mentor.
Sunflowers had a special significance for Van Gogh. He made 11 paintings of them.Yellow, for him, was an emblem of happiness – in Dutch literature, the sunflower was a symbol of devotion and loyalty. In their various stages of decay, these flowers also remind us of the cycle of life and death.
In February 1888 Van Gogh moved to Arles in the South of France, but suffered terribly from isolation and loneliness. His dream was to set up an artists’ colony based in the yellow house he had rented. That spring he invited Paul Gauguin to join him. He embarked on a prolific summer of painting, intending to show Gauguin what he could achieve. Gauguin finally arrived in October, but instead of the inspiring, artistic partnership that Van Gogh had envisaged, the two agreed on very little, and as Gauguin said ‘certainly not on painting’. Van Gogh found Gauguin’s criticisms agonising, and they made him increasingly mentally unstable, but he found Gauguin’s decision to leave in December even more unbearable.
This painting is defiantly one of my favorites. It holds a profound meaning for me- I kind of see it as always seeing the best in people. A trait that seems to be more hurtful than helpful.
Van Gogh
Shoes, 1888
oil on canvas
18 x 21 3/4 inches
Van Gogh + ’50s prom = Rodarte Spring 2012
Van Gogh’s “Still Life: Vase with 12 Sunflowers”, from Wikipedia; Rodarte dresses from Vogue.com; Van Gogh’s “Irises”, from the J. Paul Getty Museum; “The Starry Night”, from MOMA; “Almond Blossom”, from the Van Gogh Museum
Life is too short for us not to know each other.
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