The first gallery I visited on my brief visit to Amsterdam three weeks ago was the Van Gogh Museum. I haven’t written about it, because I wasn’t sure I trusted my own responses.
My expectation was to be disappointed. Let’s face it, Vincent is the Elvis of art. There are probably more kitchen aprons with his Sunflowers on them than there are sunflowers in the south of France. There are enough movies about him to occupy a month of binge watching. Every household in the Western world has an object decorated with Irises. Monet might run a close second in the home decor stakes, but he made the mistake of living to a ripe old age and keeping most body parts attached. It’s a statistical fact* that no artist has more fables attached than Vincent Van Gogh. His popularity just has to be an accident of history.
* Prove me wrong.
Problem is, I loved the Van Gogh’s first time around. Despite the crowds, despite the groupies surrounding Sunflowers, despite the fact that I’d seen a lot of the pictures in an episode of Doctor bloody Who... I loved every last image. And I figured that might have been because it was the first gallery I visited on this art lover’s odysseyette through a few Western European cities. My critical faculties may have been overwhelmed.
It’s my last day in Amsterdam. I’m off to Madrid in the morning, so I decided to revisit the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.
Van Gogh got the same response second time around. I can’t really explain why.
Even when he does something badly, he does it badly in a way nobody else does. Here’s his portrait of Agostina Segatori (1887-8):
Check her left hand with the cigarette. All wrong. Kwinana Senior High School schoolboy wrong. Does the portrait still reach into a man’s chest and rip his heart in two? Absolutely.
I may have to start listening to Elvis Presley.
My expectation was to be disappointed. Let’s face it, Vincent is the Elvis of art. There are probably more kitchen aprons with his Sunflowers on them than there are sunflowers in the south of France. There are enough movies about him to occupy a month of binge watching. Every household in the Western world has an object decorated with Irises. Monet might run a close second in the home decor stakes, but he made the mistake of living to a ripe old age and keeping most body parts attached. It’s a statistical fact* that no artist has more fables attached than Vincent Van Gogh. His popularity just has to be an accident of history.
* Prove me wrong.
Problem is, I loved the Van Gogh’s first time around. Despite the crowds, despite the groupies surrounding Sunflowers, despite the fact that I’d seen a lot of the pictures in an episode of Doctor bloody Who... I loved every last image. And I figured that might have been because it was the first gallery I visited on this art lover’s odysseyette through a few Western European cities. My critical faculties may have been overwhelmed.
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| Landscape at Twilight 1890 |
Van Gogh got the same response second time around. I can’t really explain why.
Even when he does something badly, he does it badly in a way nobody else does. Here’s his portrait of Agostina Segatori (1887-8):
Check her left hand with the cigarette. All wrong. Kwinana Senior High School schoolboy wrong. Does the portrait still reach into a man’s chest and rip his heart in two? Absolutely.
I may have to start listening to Elvis Presley.