The heroic art life of the great painter - Van Gogh

Apr 29
08:37

2013

jerryailily

jerryailily

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Vincent Van Gogh (from 1853 to 1890) was a great painter with transient art life but still achieved high success. He started painting from 1880 until his death in 1890, He was only 37 years old as a painter whose career less than ten years.

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Vincent Van Gogh (from 1853 to 1890) was a great painter with transient art life but still achieved high success. He started painting from 1880 until his death in 1890,The heroic art life of the great painter - Van Gogh Articles He was only 37 years old as a painter whose career less than ten years. Van Gogh was a person who loved life and obsessed with arts and ethical issues, he could sacrifice everything for his own art. He was so desire to find like-minded friends and dreamed about building a community of artists. He considered painting as religion and worked like a dervish. He was long-time fatigue and malnutrition and even had the problems of hair loss and mental disorder. But he devoted his whole life and enthusiasm to create the first-class artistic masterpiece.    

Van Gogh was introverted, honest and tolerant but his heart was full of boiling passion. He always tried to reveal the spirits with colors and conveyed emotional impulses with brush strokes. For this purpose, he used strong and vibrant colors, sharp points, rotary linear strokes and exaggerated metabolic images to paint. From the colors and strokes of his works, we can feel the excitements and tension when he was creating. It seems that everything under his brush is moving and rotating, full of passion and vitality. Obviously, what Van Gogh concerned was not the reproduction of objects, but expressed the personal feelings and inner passion that he obtained from observing objects through shape and color.   Van Gogh went to Paris in 1886 and got acquainted with the impressionists like Camille Pissarro, Degas and Gauguin after that. The sprightly, lively and beautiful works of the Impressionist showed a new colorful field to him. At that time, the heirs of the Japanese printmaking, the bright and pure colors of the oriental art, the shape of Two Space and the charm of the lines had stroke chords with him. He absorbed the nourishments of the Impressionist and Oriental Art, and blend with his own unique temperaments, finally found a new artistic language.    

Van Gogh did not value the realism of painting. He would rather use bold colors, exaggerated deformable objects as long as they could reveal the inner passions, the desires and pursuits for vitalities. As the pioneer of art, he and Cezanne can be said as treading different paths but leading to the same destination. Although Cezanne pursued the representations of structure, they both took a historic step in giving up the imitations of the objective objects. Since then, the artists saw the enormous potential of expressing subjective feeling through artistic methods, so that the Expressionism Arts which was influenced by Van Gogh emerged at the beginning of the 20th century.    

The artistic activities of Van Gogh were mainly in France but he was not French. He was Dutch. He was born in a Christian priest family in Dutch in 1853, and worked in Goupil Art when he was only 16. He had been to many places and visited various museums and galleries due to the need of work. He turned to harbor a keen interest in religion and decided to work as a priest later. He had been to the mining area of Southern Belgium to do missionary work and lived a pious and poor Christian life. He helped the poor there and experienced the tough life of the miners. But the missionary activities of him were not successful due to his lack of eloquence, and he was sacked by the church in 1880. This was the first blow he suffered in his life, but made him firmly embark on the road of painting.    

From 1880 to 1886, Van Gogh dedicated to paint. He had irregular painting classes and received guidance of some painters. He once studied drawing, anatomy and perspective in Brussels and Hague. The more important work of him during this period was “The Potato Eaters”.    

Van Gogh went to Paris in March 1886. His little brother Theo worked in an art shop, he lived depending on the aids of Theo. He became acquainted with many Impressionist painters, received guidance from Pissarro, established friendships with Gauguin and influenced by Seurat in Paris, so he started learning and using of bright colors. The real painting career of him started from Paris, his works gradually became bright and resounding, his art style also gradually formed during the period when following the Impressionist. He drew the experience of Impressionist and pointillism of Seurat, but he also liked using point-like strokes and pure colors. But the use of this stroke was not to break down the color but to express his wholehearted passions because he was always in a creative enthusiasm.    

Van Gogh went to Al town in southern France in 1888 and rent a cheap cabin. He went out to paint every day. The strong sunshine in the south made him excited, he painted the sun, the field under the sun, the people living around. He risked his life for painting even to the point of madness. He also wrote his hopes, loneliness to Theo during the period, these letters are important data to study Van Gogh today.    

Van Gogh hoped to sell more paintings to repay his little brother. But fate seemed to play tricks with him. He only sold one painting when he was alive, which was really a great blow to him. The social atmosphere in France was not in harmony with the Dutch protestant attitude of Van Gogh. The elegant, refined and gentle French Art was not in harmony with the rough and fierce art of him either. Coupled with repeated setbacks in love, he finally became insane when he invited Gauguin to discuss arts in Al. He picked up the razor and chased Gauguin, and cut off one of his own ears in a blaze of passion.    

He was sent to the mental hospital of Saint Remy in May 1880. He continued to paint when he was conscious. He struggled in the great spiritual pains for a year. In July 1890, when he finished his last work “Crows on the crops”, he picked up the gun, went to the field and fired a shot to his stomach. But the gun did not immediately make him to death. He died with extreme pains, with the love for humanity, the desire for life, the frenzy for art and a lonely heart three days later. Half a year after his death, his little brother Theo died too. People buried the two brothers in the same grave.  The masterpieces of him which won great reputations were all done in the last three years of his life. He sold 400 francs a picture when he was in indigence that time. Up to contemporary, his oil-paintings have become the most prestigious art treasures with the highest prices. Van Gogh melted his eager passions for life and magnanimous minds in his paintings and finally became a world-renowned artist.    

The main works of him are “The Potato Eaters” (1885), “Cypress and Stars”, “Sunflower” and “Night Cafe” (1888), “Self-Portrait” (1889) and “Doctor Gasser” (1890).