writer: Shuen-git Chow 4oct2023
"Van Gogh, Les Derniers Voyages", Chateau d'Auvers -sur-Oise
Beautiful day, one hour away from Paris, we arrived at the Chateau.
The curator - Wouter van der Veen is very excited to show us his first major master pieces, that of showig Van Gogh's last great voyage to his resting place. This art historian point of view is well displayed in great details, done in 10 months with a small team its very well presented. The chateau newly set up with the show with all the standards of a serious museum quality.
There are many high quality reproductions in resin with textures and colors correct to the original lent by the museum in Amsterdam.
Then, we visited the Doctors house, the church, the cemetery where Theo and Vincents tombs lie side by side. I have read letters between the two brothers a long time ago as a student and was very moved by the loyalty that Theo showed towards his brother Vincent. At the time, I thought, without Theo, Vincent would have been in much more troubles. Since then, I have visited museums around the world including the one in Amsterdam, even in interactive walk in paintings in the virtual world of Secondlife. Van Gogh and his small room is such a famous painting. Vincent Van Gogh remains to be one of the most memorable artist of our art history. I met some artists around the world who has been influenced by the Van Gogh full colored brush strokes and thick paint on surface techniques. After visiting the Chateau and taken in account of the life of Vincent, we suddenly have a much more 3D version of the person. That he was from a privilege luxury class, all this was not evident from the painting of his one small room. We viewers often have a romanticised image of what an artist is, the making and conditions of an artist vis a vis the time in which he lived.
Then we visited the home of the doctor and the setting of where the impressionist artists hang out, Van Gogh did not work in the dark and invented his painting style, he was also surrounded by other artists who more or less involved in the breaking out of academic painting. Pointillism is actually a more genteel way to paint, Van Gogh has larger "patches" paint strokes, but they were all in the same body of water, each rowing their own boats. Cezanne is a more intellectual painter his contemporaries painter, and also the great inventer of impressionism Camille Pissarro. Everybody breathed in the same air. I often think, nothing comes from nowhere. There is a body of movement and people dont singularly invent something, its more or less collective, a shared collective air that has been developed by each soul with their own personal background life stories and skills, curiosities to the world from where they came with shared scenarios and prehistories of problematics in paitning, and very importantly, the individual supporting team behind each artist. The output of an artist is also largely influenced by their own innate character. Some are certainly more easy going, bon vivant type and others more nervous from birth.
Auvers-sur-Oise is definitely worth a day trip, the air is very sweet and the country side clean and open, sky is a smiling blue, violet light, roofs in the distance, whats there to not like? The population is around 9000 in the village, but it receives huge number of tourists each year thanks to the painters making known of such a pretty place.
The exhibition had used Vincente Minnelli's movie to show some scenes, which were accurate in the making of the movie. A very colorful movie director in all his movies, VM used a very careful mise en scene of color compositions and its very pleasant to look at this movie vision adds a contemporary media input to the very much historical painting shows. There was also a corridor with Japanese influences of wood block color prints which were little notes of Asian inputs of the age.
"Lust for Life", Kurt Douglas and Antony Quinn
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