The Highly Opinionated Newsletter VIVolume 6
Van Gogh Face to Face at the Philadelphia Museum of Art The Van Gogh exhibition was unexpectedly beautiful. Reservations caused by the overwrought hype of previous shows proved groundless. Instead, a new aspect of the artist emerged. Something vulnerable and poignant. Part of an overwhelming need to express through art something inexpressible. And to acquire the necessary discipline to do so. Part of an urge to capture in paint something that makes life worth living despite the enormous amount of suffering it entails. Yet to record in others the pain that existed in himself. With the consequent need to turn to art as a matter of life and death. Portrait after portrait unfolds as different faces of a single work. It is the life work of an artist in pain. The effect is moving beyond words. Graphite studies from 1882-5 are explorations of contour and mass. Van Gogh attempts to forge from paper an indication of the inner essence of each person. Again and again, we see the seriousness with which he pursues his quest, and the dignity with which he endows each subject. Portraits from 1886-7 introduce color, which then becomes an independent element. It charges and heightens all available means of expression. Content and form have equal weight. Emotion emerges through brushstrokes and planes. In the four Van Gogh self-portraits on view, the physiognomy is varied because representation is not about accuracy. But the characterization is unified by the presence of the deep hurt underlying the alternating anger, mistrust or resignation. In Arles 1888-9, Van Gogh continues to delve into the suffering hidden beneath the most ordinary of lives. His models are acquaintances coping stoically with existence. L'Arlesienne is a striking woman, drenched in color as strong as she is. Three studies of Postman Joseph Roulin vary in their linear or expressionistic emphasis. Each of three versions of La Berceuse suggest subtle variations of mood. There are two landscapes in the show. The first, Moulin de la Goulette 1886-88, opens onto the gentle vista of a windmill atop a field in greens. The scene is placid, without turbulence. Enclosed Field in the Rain from 1889-90 is a blanched geometric sweep. A cracked field is enclosed by a wall. In the distance is a mountain range. There is felt a longing for peace. A sense that it may exist somewhere beyond, somewhere in the presence of the mountains. Is it a longing for obliteration? Perhaps so. Shortly thereafter Van Gogh took his own life. The art, his line to survival, had been a means of connecting to his suffering and giving it expression. But not even art could prevent or transform that suffering. In the faces before us, there is a dedication to capturing something beneath the suffering, something that defies it. To seek an essence that defines who we are in other terms. But the peace of the soul will forever elude him. He will never get past the sorrow. And that sorrow infuses every gaze of every portrait. It is Van Gogh's gaze, mirroring the gaze of humanity. It is our gaze. "He was so my own, own brother," writes Theo to his mother, upon Van Gogh's death. The sentence is heartrending. It captures Van Gogh's cry of the soul. The eternal cry of the soul. Our cry.
Gentle Indignation |