Van Gogh: The Expressionist Essay, Research Paper

& # 8220 ; What lives in art and is everlastingly living, is first of all the painter, and so the painting. & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; Vincent Van Gogh

Expressionism is an art signifier in which the really manner itself and the symbols that the creative person utilizations are meant to show his innermost feelings on the topic. Vincent new wave Gogh has frequently been hailed as the quintessential expressionist painter. His graphics covers a scope of tempers over the old ages, and his canvases are about mirrors into his troubled psyche.

Vincent new wave Gogh lived a troubled life. He one time described his childhood as & # 8221 ; cold, glooming and sterile. & # 8221 ; He alienated himself from his parents and siblings by being a stubborn and recluse kid. He was gawky, incommunicative, and lived an early life of purdah, being misunderstood by his ain household. The lone sibling he had any kind of close relationship with was his brother, Theo. He would subsequently be Vincent? s biggest protagonist, both moral and fiscal, during the formative old ages of his unsuccessful calling in art.

As the immature Vincent grew up, he realized that art was his naming in life. He decided that he would paint and do a life off his gross revenues. Ironically, though his pictures may sell for 1000000s today? new wave Gogh really sold merely one picture in his life-time, and this, for the meager cost of 40 francs.

Van Gogh? s jobs were legion. First of wholly, he merely didn? Ts have the societal accomplishments to be happy in his personal life. He had a few black relationships with adult females before droping deep into purdah and depression. His pictures during his troubled love affairs and the resulting griefs are filled with darkness and hurting, reflecting his inner sorrow. Second, while Vincent? s pictures were indisputably superb, he merely didn? Ts have the interpersonal accomplishments to do any gross revenues! The fable has it that he really used to reason with purchasers who praised them, seeking to convert them forcefully that his work was non unusually good! He was an highly modest adult male, possibly excessively so. He signed all of his plants with merely & # 8220 ; Vincent, & # 8221 ; ne’er adding the family name.

His legion personal failures are arguably apparent in his plants at the clip. His inability to happen company and his changeless dependance on Theo for fiscal support depressed him well. In his portrayals of people and his scenes during this period, one could reason that the lines and the drab looks on the faces are practically shouting reproduction of new wave Gogh? s ain discontent in life. His scenes are dark and hopeless, with few random splashes of visible radiation.

This combination of personal defects led to van Gogh? s stretchs with being an helper instructor and a bookseller. He failed miserably in both instances. His parents, frustrated with back uping their & # 8220 ; failure & # 8221 ; of a boy, begged him to go a curate. He entered into Theology, but shortly realized that he lacked the ability to larn the math and foreign linguistic communications necessary. However, he did finally come in an evangelical school, and went on to go a local priest in Brussels.

Van Gogh drew new inspiration from working with the hapless peasant category in Brussels. While he found it highly hard to pass on his spiritual point of views to them, he was a saint in other ways. He was known to give away his ain sparse vesture and money to assist them. He became fascinated by their predicament, but someway, populating with them began to pull him down to their degree. Their rough life conditions and enduring made him lose religion in faith. In consequence, ironically, his fold converted him! At this point in clip, he became fascinated by their wood coal drawings and by scenes of mundane life in arrant poorness. One of his most acclaimed pictures from this period is & # 8220 ; The Potato Eaters. & # 8221 ; This depicts a set of aged people during the Great Potato Famine in Ireland. The colorss are dark and drab Greies, blues, leafy vegetables and browns, and they are sharing a thin repast of murphies and broth. One can about see van Gogh? s understanding for these people. The picture is so emotionally charged? .it is as though he has become one of them, and entered into their agony himself.

Vincent returned to his childhood place after a piece, to populate with his household once more. There, he fell profoundly in love with a cousin. The feelings were non reciprocated, and the relationship was doomed to failure. When his male parent, a profoundly spiritual adult male, found out about new wave Gogh? s incestuous inclinations, the consequence was a father-son rift that was ne’er resolved.

Once once more, van Gogh entered into a period of deep personal depression. Even looking at his self-portraits throughout the old ages, his agonies are apparent. His face is sickly, his oral cavity sags, his jaw is set, and his eyes are sunken. His dress is ever brown or really dark in coloring material. Clearly, this is non a happy adult male.

As new wave Gogh continued into his late 20? s an

d early 30? , his life merely grew worse. He moved to Paris, where he befriended fellow creative person Gaugin. Once once more, though, Vincent? s personal jobs and inability to hammer normal, permanent interpersonal relationships led to a monolithic battle with Gaugin. This was the battle that left van Gogh feeling so angry and hurt that he cut off his ain ear in a tantrum of fury. How can one non state that he is a true expressionist when one sees the calamity of his “Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe” ?

Theo new wave Gogh heard of his brother? s fickle act, and had Vincent institutionalized in Arles in 1888. In the refuge, van Gogh painted more than 70 graphicss, stemming from his psychological point of views and defeat and depression in his life at this minute. Cuting his ear off was merely the beginning of his psychotic episodes. In retrospect, it seems as though new wave Gogh? s emotional eruptions occurred prior to any perceived? menaces? to his relationships with people he cared approximately. For illustration, he had a dislocation after the battle with Gaugin. He had another upon Theo? s battle ( Vincent thought matrimony would take his brother off from him ) and yet another at the nuptials.

Predictably, with increasing psychiatric jobs and personal sadness, new wave Gogh? s expressionist endowments were at their premier. Paintings such as & # 8220 ; Wheat Field with Crows & # 8221 ; ( 1890 ) reflected dappled feelings of optimism ( characterized by bright and brassy yellows and oranges ) and deep desperation and hopelessness ( as seen in the navy skies and black crow symbols ) . Vincent did endure from bipolar upset, which caused him to change between a frenzied province and a deep depressive province, so his artistic ambivalency is non surprising.

Merely a few yearss after finishing this picture, van Gogh was dead. On July 27, 1890, he shot himself in the tummy and died.

As he said to his darling brother, Theo, near the terminal of his disruptive life

& # 8220 ; I feel & # 8230 ; a failure. That & # 8217 ; s it every bit far as I & # 8217 ; m concerned & # 8230 ; I feel that this is the fate that I accept, that will ne’er change. & # 8221 ;

Vincent new wave Gogh? s life was a calamity? a sad bequest of 1000s of pictures and studies which all state his life narrative. In the beautiful and intense colors of plants like & # 8220 ; Sunflowers, & # 8221 ; & # 8220 ; Haystacks & # 8221 ; , & # 8220 ; Wheatfield with Cypresses & # 8221 ; , & # 8220 ; Almond Branches in Blossom & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; Irises & # 8221 ; ? is it non possible to see a gleam of hope for a huffy mastermind? Look at the vivid yellow and red-orange chromaticities. It is as though these are images of what he wants in his life. Colour? .representing felicity, love, freedom? An flight from his boundary line insanity, possibly. Then, in plants like & # 8220 ; Prisoners Exercising, & # 8221 ; Peasant Woman with the Yellow Straw Hat, & # 8221 ; & # 8220 ; La Berceuse & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; The Potato Eaters, & # 8221 ; we are given a dark penetration into the universe of the hapless and oppressed. His colorss are ambivalent? runing from bright flowers and corn fields to the dark lines etched into the troubled faces of his topics. In others, the full scene is gray and dull, demoing how far into the agony of his topics Vincent has allowed himself to drop. In his concluding old ages, new wave Gogh created some of his most acclaimed plants. & # 8220 ; Starry Night & # 8221 ; , & # 8220 ; Starry Night Above the Rhone, & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; Wheatfield with Crows. & # 8221 ; These pictures were afloat with vivid, dark blues, glistening yellowish-white stars, black birds in a turbulent sky, and bright maize turning in a field of gold. These pre-suicidal chef-d’oeuvres are van Gogh? s snapshot of a disease. Earlier in his life, he painted his ain room- & # 8221 ; Bedroom & # 8221 ; ? .the empty chairs and the colorss used ( bluish walls, brown and green dappled floor ) reflected the early marks of his societal isolation and possibly, the onslaught of his psychiatric upset. Hence, it was merely expected that he would go forth us with a image of the concluding phases of his conflict with manic-depression. His concluding pictures radius of deep, deep torment and unhappiness. His life had been a failure. Yet at the same clip, they glowed with the yellows and reds of his passion? that undying flicker of lunacy and mastermind that dwelled within.

Vincent new wave Gogh transcribed his emotions onto canvas throughout a brief and troubled life. He is the prototype of expressionism, and will populate on as such for coevalss to come.

& # 8220 ; Well, even in that deep wretchedness I felt my energy revive, and I said to myself: in malice of everything I shall lift once more, I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in great disheartenment, and I will travel on with my drawing, and from that minute everything has seemed transformed in me. & # 8221 ; -Vincent new wave Gogh, 1886 ( On his thrust to paint, even in the thick of desperation )

BibliographyBonnie Butterfield, & # 8220 ; Troubled Life of Vincent Van Gogh & # 8221 ; , hypertext transfer protocol: //cvc.csusb.edu/VincentVanGogh.htm [ available on Feb. 21, 2001 ]

Ed. By Francesca Castria Marchetti Vincent new wave Gogh Rizzoli International Publications Inc. , New York, 1999.

Encarta 2000 Encyclopedia [ CD Rom ] , Article: & # 8220 ; Expressionism & # 8221 ; Microsoft Incorporated, 2000