Going to the Van Gogh Exhibit at the Denver Art Museum is a stunning experience – not just to view the beauty of the works but to watch the development of Van Gogh’s artistry over his short lifetime.
I went to the exhibit with two friends, Leigh Dehne (he and
I have ridden trains together but never visited an art museum) and Adrienne
Baker, friend, co-conspirator and both of us former college writing teachers. Adrienne
and I made comparisons to learning how to first write a five-paragraph essay
(thesis, three supporting ideas, supporting details in each of the middle three
paragraphs, and conclusion) to Van Gogh’s learning basic tools and techniques
of painting, sketching, drawing and then developing those so he could reveal
his ultimate artistic genius.
Along those same lines, a writer would learn that
five-paragraph essay first and then using that same format be able to write a
much longer, more complex paper...and even a book. Or a poet might be learning the
elements of poetry and developing along those lines. An artist is an artist,
but all of them, in all genres, must learn their craft and many skills to evolve
fully.
Van Gogh took these basic lessons in art and then would turn
them into his own style. Copying admired artists is a technique for becoming
competent across all artistic disciplines. Van Gogh joined the Impressionists
in Paris and later in southern France, at first copying some of their expertise,
but then always making the techniques fit his own unique and growing style. It
was always Vincent emerging. No cutout copy of another artist.
We saw early works that used mostly dark, basic colors –
blacks and browns and all versions of those. Sketches, drawings, then
paintings. He liked to paint people, real people and not models. Peasants.
Working in the fields. Their bodies and faces were real, and you could feel the
emotion coming from their faces, their implied body movements.
Then he began to add color. Just highlights at first. A
touch of blue here, a bit of the French flag and the red stripes in it. Then
the people changed. No longer peasants, they were people with their faces
blurred and their clothes that of urbanites, walking in parks in Paris. Much
more color was added, but beginning with the less brilliant – mostly variations
of blue with vibrant touches of red and orange.
The more he learned, the more he painted, the more colors
appeared and began to dominate his paintings.
Texture and brush styles were definitely his own. Many times
he applied paint thickly so there was a depth just from the amount of paint on
his canvasses.
As we moved through the rooms signifying his stages, we
learned more about his artistry and his unique brush marks, choices of color,
and choices of setting.
When I walked into the final room with his last paintings,
my breath was stolen from me. By the vibrancy and fullness of the colors that I
felt enveloped by – emotionally, physically, mentally. All his distinct
signifying style marks were depicted in these paintings, but they had all come
together to make a whole. He had literally disappeared into his canvasses. He
was the poetry, he was the color, he was the brush mark.
He painted forests of violet trees, skies with clouds so
grand they were only possible from his heart and mind and hand, mountains with
thick outlines impossible in nature, but certainly Vincent’s mountains. Colors
so brilliant they stung my eyes yet I wanted more and more evidence of his artistic passion, more paintings, all of them.
I wish I had turned around and gone back to the beginning of
the exhibit and then walked quickly through the rooms, taking in his
development, his distinct style, and then lingered even longer, in wonder, in
the last room, in the crowning moment and cohesive whole of Vincent Van Gogh,
the artist.
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