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Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

vangoghmuseum.nl

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Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#21

Post by gumby »

garyrob wrote: post #19

The FAQ on that site has an entry for "Where is ‘The Starry Night’?" and its answer is at Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Where it happens that I saw it a few weeks ago, as part of a big Van Gogh exhibition with many of his paintings. I have to say that if you have a chance to go to that, or to another Van Gogh exhibition, I really recommend it. From what I understand, not everyone resonates with his work. In fact I bel…

I’m in the “van Gough: meh” camp.

But one thing (of many) that I love about being alive is that not everybody has the same tastes, and I enjoyed reading your comment.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#22

Post by strobe »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #18

For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but the perspective being off feels a little...amateurish? Or is that an intentional choice? If it is, would love to know the 'why' of it

'perspective' it's just a tool in toolbox of creativity and you can play with it whatever you think would be appropriate to archive your goals.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#23

Post by lizknope »

garyrob wrote: post #19

The FAQ on that site has an entry for "Where is ‘The Starry Night’?" and its answer is at Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Where it happens that I saw it a few weeks ago, as part of a big Van Gogh exhibition with many of his paintings. I have to say that if you have a chance to go to that, or to another Van Gogh exhibition, I really recommend it. From what I understand, not everyone resonates with his work. In fact I bel…

I was never a fan of Van Gogh until I saw Starry Night in person at MOMA in NYC.

The thing that jumps out at me is literally the paint on the painting. There is a lot of height to it. The paint is so thick in sections that it sticks out far above the canvas that it can cause a shadow next to it. We tend to think of paintings as 2 dimensional but Starry Night is 3D and seeing it online or in a book or poster is not the same experience.

Since then I've seen about 10 other Van Gogh paintings in museums and I noticed this similar style in his paintings.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#24

Post by gumby »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #18

For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but the perspective being off feels a little...amateurish? Or is that an intentional choice? If it is, would love to know the 'why' of it

I used to think “painting is obsolete since we have photographs”.

I later came to realize that paintings can show things photographs can’t, often much more.

Every time you “say” (express) something you are making choices: emphasizing some things and glossing over others. Something strange happens to you but when you tell me about it you skip the extraneous details and focus on what reinforces your point. Taking a photograph, even if not edited (cropped, lighting changed, etc), and even if spontaneous or lucky, is as much about what is not in the frame as what is. In a good movie, we don’t have to wait while the character goes to the bathroom, or while they drive to the store. We just get the part of the story that matters (this is Chekhov’s gun).

All that is true of a painting, but like a story you can make lots of edits, pulling things literally into the frame that are metasyntactic, that a camera would never see.

In a way the sharp literalism of a photo is much too limiting, as it tunes your visual system to focus on the image itself more than what might be expressed.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#26

Post by empiricus »

I was once in the Orsay museum, and realized that the Van Gogh paintings are nice enough to put in the kitchen; which unfortunately is a bar too high for 99% of existing paintings in the world. For some reasons, many painters do not try to make beautiful things, or they are incapable.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#28

Post by larata_media »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #18

For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but the perspective being off feels a little...amateurish? Or is that an intentional choice? If it is, would love to know the 'why' of it

I can’t speak on his behalf, but I can speak on my own experiences in creating art. It could be something as simple as that whatever you create is not always intended to be a great work, but rather it starts out as an experiment to teach yourself something, or learn a technique, and you work on it so much that you enjoy it, and it eventually becomes something. Artists aren’t really concerned with perfection all the time, sometimes we’re just discovering something in the craft.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#29

Post by devilbunny »

lizknope wrote: post #23
garyrob wrote: post #19

The FAQ on that site has an entry for "Where is ‘The Starry Night’?" and its answer is at Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Where it happens that I saw it a few weeks ago, as part of a big Van Gogh exhibition with many of his paintings. I have to say that if you have a chance to go to that, or to another Van Gogh exhibition, I really recommend it. From what I understand, not everyone resonates with his work. In fact I bel…

I was never a fan of Van Gogh until I saw Starry Night in person at MOMA in NYC. The thing that jumps out at me is literally the paint on the painting. There is a lot of height to it. The paint is so thick in sections that it sticks out far above the canvas that it can cause a shadow next to it. We tend to think of paintings as 2 dimensional but Starry Night is 3D and seeing it online or in a book or poster is not th…

I had the same reaction to "Irises" at the Getty Museum in LA.

If a city near you has the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, go see it. It's quite impressive. Also, if they're your thing, it would be a great thing to see while on psychedelics.

Re: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings

#30

Post by pluijzer »

gumby wrote: post #24
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #18

For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but the perspective being off feels a little...amateurish? Or is that an intentional choice? If it is, would love to know the 'why' of it

I used to think “painting is obsolete since we have photographs”. I later came to realize that paintings can show things photographs can’t, often much more. Every time you “say” (express) something you are making choices: emphasizing some things and glossing over others. Something strange happens to you but when you tell me about it you skip the extraneous details and focus on what reinforces your point. Taking a pho…

And even with just images. Last winter a saw two horses in snowy hills. It was a beautiful image. I tried to capture it with my camera but couldn't. The hills were too flat, the snow didn't have the blue hue from my memory and the horses didn't have such a wild manes. Maybe the picture I took was a more realistic representation of reality but it did not capture what I expirienced. Stiqll think of painting it.
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