Riding The Neo-Impressionist Bandwagon
By David Browne • March 25th, 2008
These waning days of my time here in Amsterdam have necessitated a frenzy of tourist action and interaction. Living in the same place for longer than one month is all that is required to shed the mantle of the tourist and don the cloak of resident superiority. Being a resident also means dallying to visit the must-see tourist hangouts, if it is fair to call museums that hold the world’s treasures as ‘hang-outs’. When relating world travel stories to friends I abhor justifying why I didn’t go somewhere where the inquisitor obviously thought I should have gone. To avoid another potential pointless justification, a visit to the Van Gogh museum became a mandatory action.
Vincent Van Gogh was Dutch and a painter. This is not much of a surprise, the Dutch are good at supplying the bright world with gloomy painters. His early works were very much in the vain of the heavy-set and serious low-landers that must have dominate his opinion of art in the mid-nineteenth century. But later, after a dally with the French, he took those same themes and applied liberal dashes of multi-colored expressionism to produce the instantly recognizable and completely uninspiring poster prints that adorn the world’s waiting rooms. It is one of life’s paradoxes that whilst waiting to have a tooth extracted or nervously deliberating the outcome of a biopsy, we should be forced the stare at the artwork of a man who cut off his own ear and soon after shot himself – to death!
What is amazing about Van G. is his output. He was only painting for about 14 years and managed to produce some 900 paintings, a few thousand drawings and enough correspondence over a limited number of friends to probably bore them all senseless. He was the 19th century equivalent of a micro-blogger:
10:35 – Feeling depressed
10:37 – Cut off ear
10:39 – Ouch
During his short tenure as an artist that nobody would buy, he dallied with many styles and a few women. More successful in the former than the latter but it’s the dallying that is his weakness. They say “it takes one to know one” and although my credentials as an art critic are somewhat dubious, my bona-fides as a dallier (read: hack) of styles are rock solid. I never felt that he settled into a style long enough to really master it, he was influenced by (read: stole) styles and compositions from other painters. His paintings are iconic and instantly recognizable and, quite frankly, not as good as their multi-million dollar price tag would suggest. This, unfortunately becomes painfully obvious on one particular wall of the gallery where V.G.’s work hangs next to those of his friends and contemporaries. In comparison, poor Vincent pales; the works of Gauguin, for example, showing more depth in style, technique and intent. And therein lies the real thrust of this article: is great really great or is great just the familiar and famous?
The V.G. museum, even 90 minutes before closing on a Sunday afternoon, was packed with tourists. People from all over the world had come to see these great works in their natural habitat. There was a palpable sense of a combined expectation of seeing the genuine article, million of dollars of oil paint and canvas, for real. A true wonder of the world. Respectful barging to get closer to Sunflowers, baited breath and then it was over. Shuffle on to the next but not so famous work.
The popular saturation of any piece of art is surely it’s demise. Sunflowers, for example, looks no better in the canvas than it does on the print being sold by the hawkers outside the museum. At least, that’s the perception. Of course, the original is better but our collective conscience of what that particular painting actually looks like is based on the exposure we’ve had of it in waiting rooms and office lobbies across the world. The reproduction is the painting. So, when we gaze upon the original, our brain makes a cerebral connection to the stored image we’ve been gazing at our whole life and throws that up on the ocular screen instead. This same effect happens in other areas of our life. For example, going to see your favorite rock band in a large venue cannot reproduce the intimacy of the sonic experience that a small club or the record can. This disappointment and manic justification of the ticket price leads us to just replay the famous and favorite songs in our head whilst we watch the performers mime to our inner recording. This is why listening to a band’s new material in a large venue is painful and boring – we have no reference point of the familiar.
In the case of V.G., I, and I suspect a number of my fellow tourists, left the museum and instantly forgot what we saw. The original work just wasn’t good enough, or better than, the image that is nicely filed away in my cranial indexing system. And, just because it is in my cranial indexing system doesn’t mean it’s good either. I also have re-runs of That 70’s Show and the collected works of the progressive rock band Marilion filed away there too. Neither make me proud.
David Browne is David once wrote for his school newspaper. He has spent the subsequent years earning money from writing, playing, singing and typing for other people. As of 2008, his net worth from such pursuits is estimated to be around $1.27. In January 2007 he left his home in the United States to travel the world in the hope that non-native English speakers would enjoy his company. He has not returned home since (although their enjoyment is currently unproven). He was born in England, resides in Amsterdam but is domiciled in Seattle.
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