(A review of Exhibition on Screen - Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers)
There is no shortage of films about Vincent Van Gogh. Among the biopics are Vincente Minnelli's Lust For Life (1956), Leonard Nimoy's Vincent (1981), Paul Cox's Vincent (1987), Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo (1990), Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's Loving Vincent (2017), and Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate (2018). Then there are BBC documentaries like Waldemar Januszczak's Vincent: The Full Story (2004) and Andrew Hutton's Van Gogh: Painted With Words (2010).
Since including the Dutchman in Tim Marlow's series, Great Artists (2001), Seventh Art has produced two Exhibition on Screen titles, Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing (2015) and Van Gogh & Japan (2019). Yet David Bickerstaff, who directed these EOS entries, insists there's still more to discover about the fabled artist and uses a landmark exhibition at the National Gallery in London to make his case in Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers.
A wintry scene leads into `Snowy Landscape With Arles in the Background' (1888), as Vincent Van Gogh writes to his brother Theo about the landscape in Arles having similarities with those he has seen in Japanese painting. Exhibition co-ordinator, Camilla Homburg, explains that Van Gogh was only in the south of France from February 1888 to May 1890. Over `Self-Portrait' (1889), fellow co-ordinator Christopher Riopelle remarks on the enduring popularity and influence of an artist who was being faked just 25 years after his death. But the National Gallery show aims to shed new light on this remarkable period of artistic creativity and personal turmoil.
The opening room contains just three paintings from 1888, with `The Poet's Garden (Public Garden in Arles)' being flanked by `The Lover (Portrait of Lieutenant Paul-Eugène Milliet)' and `The Poet (Portrait of Eugène Boch)'. Art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston explains that Van Gogh was a country boy and was happier in parks and on river banks than at the nearby Roman ruins, as they enabled him to create a world inhabited by lovers and poets. She also reveals his love of verse and his familiarity with everyone from Dante and Shakespeare to Walt Whitman and Christina Rossetti. Hence, his desire to form an artistic colony in Arles, with Paul Gauguin as its leader.
Eugène Boch was a Belgian painter whom Van Gogh befriended on his arrival, while Paul-Eugène Milliet was a soldier, decorated from his time in North Africa, who was also a huge hit with the local women. While Van Gogh saw him as the embodiment of the great lover, he may well have been envious of his success with the opposite sex. However, artist Lachlan Goudie focusses on the experimental use of colour in these portraits and how Van Gogh juxtaposed shades to bring intensity and vibrancy, as well as intimacy, to works like `Path in the Park, Arles' (1888), as he discusses in a letter to Theo.
Over `The Potato Eaters' (1885) and `View From Theo's Apartment' (1887), Riopelle and Homburg explore how moving to Paris impacted on Van Gogh's style. Around the time he painted `Self-Portrait With Grey Felt Hat' (1887-88), however, he realised he needed to go beyond Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and that landscapes would be the key to his departure. In heading south to produce items like `Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles' and `The Public Garden, Arles' (both 1888), Van Gogh felt he was keeping company with Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Riopelle suggests he also sought to change how love was depicted on canvas and idealised this scrappy public space as a place of enchantment. The irony is not lost on Campbell-Johnston that Van Gogh had to content himself with fortnightly visits to the local brothel because he was so unlucky in love, but he continued to use Nature to find ways of conveying emotion.
Even when he was committed to the hospital at Saint-Rémy after a number of nervous breakdowns, Van Gogh continued to take inspiration from his surroundings for pieces such as `Undergrowth' and `The Garden of the Asylum At Saint-Rémy' (both 1889). But Campbell-Johnston claims this was typical of the poetic ferocity with which the artist transferred what he saw on to canvas in order to create intimate worlds to share with the viewer. As we see `Flowering Shrubs' (1889), she also considers how Van Gogh's letters contradict the peasant persona he liked to project and reveal him to be a cultured thinker who was well aware of the artistic path he was taking and its consequences.
Riopelle confirms that Van Gogh read voraciously in five languages and used his letters (some 900 of which survive) to analyse ideas and inspirations and how he planned to implement them. Over details of `The Rock of Montmajour With Pine Trees' (1889), an extract from a letter to Theo outlines the influence of Japanese art on Van Gogh's vision and Goudie notes the fidelity of his line drawings, but also their disarming blend of naiveté and sophistication - with reference to `Hill With the Ruins of Montmajour' (1889) and `View of La Crau From Montmajour' (1888) - as he seeks to employ marks on paper to sculpt the landscape in the absence of colour. `A Trunk of a Tree' (1888) confirms the influence of Japanese wood prints, as the image has subtlety that atones for its flatness. Goudie also reflects on how the use of Japanese reed pens made it awkward to sketch items like `View of Arles From Montmajour' and `Trees, Montmajour' (both 1888), as they were scratchy and required regular ink dips. However, the technique prompted Van Gogh to find new ways of making marks to achieve his ends.
Shots of `Roses' (1889) and `Iris' (1890) are accompanied by Van Gogh's admission that he doesn't always faithfully reproduce reality in making his pictures. Goudie qualifies this by explaining how he made close studies before stylising his subject matter in order to capture the transient beauty of a flower and the rhythmic effects upon it of dancing light and rippling breezes. With enthusiastic expertise, he also highlights the use of brushstokes and colour and the thickness of the paint to suggest the shape and texture of the blue flower and both its well-defined green leaves and the surrounding foliage.
Homburg and Campbell-Johnston concur over `Hospital At Saint-Rémy' and `Trees in the Garden of the Asylum' (1889) that Van Gogh sought to capture energy through innovative colour relationships that bring the canvas alive. As the drawing of `The Garden of the Asylum With Sawn-Off Tree' (1889) morphs into the canvas of the same name, Van Gogh vividly justifies his choices in a letter to Émile Bernard. It's a beautiful description of content and intent and conveys the sensitivity of the man in awe of the world that caused him such suffering.
In a letter his sister, Willemien, he enthuses about the aspect and amenities offered by 'The Yellow House (The Street)' (1888), which overlooked a small garden in Arles. His hopes for what he might achieve in this sanctuary are deeply poignant, as he writes: `The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant colour, well arranged, resplendent.' Homburg notes over `The Bedroom' (1889) that Van Gogh hoped to use the tiny rented space to show his art, while also extending his hospitality to visiting friends like Gauguin, whom he hoped would become part of an artistic community.
Among the key works from this period were 'Starry Night Over the Rhône' (1888), whose palette Van Gogh details in a letter to Theo. Homburg contrasts this picture painted at night under gas lamps to `The Starry Night' (1889), which was composed in the studio and typifies for Riopelle the way Van Gogh went beyond reportage to impart his knowledge and experience upon a subject. Campbell-Johnston detects something similar in `The Sower' (1888), which bears the influence of Utagawa Hiroshige and Jean-François Millet in using the moon to create a halo that dignifies the labour of a humble man. Such deceptive simplicity is also evident in 'Van Gogh's Chair' and `Gauguin's Chair' (1888), which were mentioned in a letter to Theo. In another missive to Gauguin, Van Gogh, he describes `The Green Vineyard' (1888), whose thick impasto fascinates Goudie, while Homburg notices the women with red parasols that he seemingly included in the hope they would appeal to potential buyers in Paris (who liked such `poetic subjects') after it had decorate the wall in Arles.
Van Gogh's devotion to his friend is evident in `Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin', but Campbell-Johnston also detects a rivalry in `The Alyscamps' (1888), which Gauguin also painted. He also wrote frequently to Bernard and informed him that he was going for a stained glass look when he painted 'Sunflowers' (1888) and `Sunflowers' (1889) - with their respective white and pale blue backgrounds - and hung them together in Arles. The National Gallery exhibition reunites them for the first time since Van Gogh's death and Riopelle reckons that he used the walls of the Yellow House to gauge how pictures would work together in gallery spaces or on a client's wall.
As he tells Theo, `Still Life With Coffee Pot' and `Oleanders' (1888) were painted in the same week and he also informed Gauguin that he was excited by the way colour suggested the melody being hummed in 'La Berceuse (Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle)' (1889). When he showed this to postman friend, Joseph Roulin, it was between the sunflower pictures and the gallery has replicated the arrangement, which he also illustrated in a letter to Theo. Goudie notes the way the colours work together across what Van Gogh had conceived as a triptych. However, the radicalism of his approach sparked tensions with Gauguin and the pair fell out towards the end of 1888, when a breakdown also led to the painting of
`Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear' (1889).
Recovery brought about renewed periods of activity that yielded `The Courtyard of the Hospital At Arles' and `Ward in the Hospital At Arles' (1889). Campbell-Johnston wonders whether painting had a therapeutic effect, as he told his sister that it was a relief to be lucid again after four episodes and a number of fainting fits. Van Gogh admits to using tree trunks and box bushes to reflect his melancholy, which he feels is as legitimate a subject as love. Thus, there's a telling contrast between the orchards depicted in `View of Arles' (1889) and the same landscape painted with Impressionist élan the year before.
Goudie suggests over `The Stevedores' and `The Trinquetoille Bridge' (both 1888) that Van Gogh invested as much emotion as observation in his landscapes, as he employs colour to convey his response to the scene. As we see `Field With Poppies', he also raises the difficulty of painting en plein air, as wind and heat can add to the constant comings and goings within a vista like the one in `The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders At Saint-Rémy)' (1889).
Yet, even when he paints something more controllable, such as `Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)' (1888), Van Gogh reveals an emotional honesty that makes one forget about the quality of his craftsmanship and warm to the vibrancy and vulnerability of his personality and his worldview.
Homburg latches on to how Van Gogh adapted scenes to fit his canvas and bring drama and truth to the likes of `Landscape From Saint-Rémy (Wheatfield Behind Saint-Paul Hospital' and `Landscape With Ploughman' (both 1889). In a letter, he confessed that the latter had a darkness that reflected his ill health and made him fearful. But he could also take heart from the struggle of the reaper in `Landscape At Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field With Peasant)' (1889), as the notion of death in the golden sunshine seemed consoling.
With his doctors limiting his access to the outdoors, Van Gogh began using repeated motifs to conduct experiments. Riopelle alights on the thin cypress trees that became a feature of this period in items like `A Wheatfield, With Cypresses', while Homburg draws attention to the stylisation that occurs in such repetitions as `The Olive Trees', `Olive Trees', and `Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy' (all 1889). Goudie again shows how brushstrokes have been used to capture the sense of movement that Van Gogh experienced as he worked. But he took the ideas back to the studio to create `Olive Grove With Two Olive Pickers' (1889), which introduced a narrative element and demonstrated the sophistication of his approach.
The last two paintings Van Gogh produced before he went north close the National Gallery show. He tells Theo that he is in a good mood having completed `Long Grass With Butterflies' and `Tree Trunks in the Grass' (both 1890). He was sad to be leaving the south, but felt a new confidence in his work and had high hopes as he set off for Auvers-sur-Oise. Yet, as Homburg attests, he would only live another three months before taking his own life on 29 July 1890 at the age of 37. In that short time, he took a new direction and one can only wonder where his journey might have taken him. His legacy, however, rests on the Arles/Saint-Rémy era and Campbell-Johnston insists it nurtured the X Factor that makes Van Gogh the world's most reproduced artist.
An overwhelming sense of sadness permeates this documentary, which does a customarily wonderful job in conveying the layout of the exhibition and presenting the artworks in long shot and exquisite detail. Lachlan Goudie's insights into Van Gogh's technique are invaluable, as he explains the reasons for the overall composition and the application of the paint to capture the movement within the scene, as well as its contents.
However, the co-ordinators rather struggle to justify the `Poets & Lovers' epithet and the screenplay by David Bickerstaff and producer Phil Grabsky wisely avoids trying to second guess the motives behind a subtitle that has left several art critics underwhelmed. They might, however, have provided a deeper biographical context for the pictures, as those coming to this period for the first time might not know the details of the Dutchman's mental health issues, how and where he was treated, and how his work was impacted by his various breakdowns and recoveries. Although the letters are intelligently used to show how Van Gogh shared his obsessive imagination at a distance, a little more might have been said about the people he lived among in Arles and how he paid his bills when he wasn't selling any paintings.
Nevertheless, Bickerstaff succeeds in doing justice to the 61 paintings and drawings assembled by the National Gallery. He also uses the images and the correspondence to bring the viewer closer to Van Gogh, as he sought tirelessly to commit to canvas ideas that made endless intellectual and artistic demands on his artistry and ingenuity. Consequently, this is a valuable study of the aesthetic questingness and stylistic adaptability of Van Gogh's radical talent, as he strove with almost childlike sincerity to teach us how to see the world as he did.
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