Well Hello again mates! Today and for the rest of this month I will be talking to you about the beautiful world of art. I have been painting since I was a youngster, and the walls surrounding my bars are covered by an overwhelming collection of paintings. Late last night as I was surfing the web, I came across an interesting article about my favorite painter, Vincent Van Gogh.
Van Gogh was a painter that lived during the 1800’s and is recognized as one of the world’s most fascinating artists, portraying his talent through the oil on canvas painting method. After reading the first article however, I came across another article which happened to basically contradict everything the first one said and left me thinking about the whole issue for a while. Anyways, lets analyze both of the articles.
The first article is by Art Review and it is titled “Van Gogh: The last painting”. The author acknowledges Van Gogh’s fabulous artistic ability and his high degree of intelligence throughout the article. The main argument however, is that he never wished to portray his depression and sadness through his artwork because he deeply cared about his family, and had no intention of letting anyone know about his feelings. The author has several sources of evidence to demonstrate this.
First, his self-portraits do not clearly show a man in depression or in sadness so it would be wrong to say that he was in fact trying to show something. In fact, in one of his self-portraits in 1889, he painted himself from his right side so that he could hide the left side of his face that was missing an ear he had cut off a few weeks earlier. Many of his paintings are live and full color, and if he had wished to portray his depression he would have certainly painted with darker colors.
Second, his letters to his mother before his death shows that “he deeply loved and admired her” and that in no way did he want her to see his sadness and melancholy. The author argues that through his writings one could tell that he was an emotional and intelligent human being. So basically mates, this author admires Van Gogh a lot and thinks that he should be admired for his artwork rather than the psychological problems he had, because these were not being portrayed through his paintings.
The second article, by Laura Miller is titled “Van Gogh on Prozac”. Here the author argues that the only reason Van Gogh’s paintings are so praised and admired to this day is because of the fact that he was crazy, and if Prozac had been available to him a hundred years ago, his artwork would never even have been known to exist. She states that his depression, epilepsy and suicide largely contributed to his success as an artist.
This author provides very little evidence throughout her article and bases her arguments or statements on personal belief. That is the reason mates that I do not agree with any of her arguments.
The first one, is that Van Gogh was in a state of deep depression and enjoyed showing this through his paintings; hence all of the personal portraits he did during the two years prior to his death. Her second argument, based on the fact that the first one is correct, is that people loved his paintings because everyone tends to have a natural tendency of liking art because of the artist’s personality, especially if he is crazy and unstable.
The second argument, or well I do not really think I can call this argument, is that “had Prozac been available back then, no one would have wanted him to take it” because he would of stopped painting such incredible art. This basically means that people like to see others suffer because they receive a benefit from it (a good painting). This statement is totally outrageous and portrays normal people as some sort of monsters. I have to say that I strongly disagree with this author and believe that her comments are completely out of line.
Well mates I hope you enjoyed this, ill see you all soon!
"Van Gogh:The last self-portrait". The Art Review. London, England. 2006
Miller, Laura. "Van Gogh on Prozac".
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/05/23/kramer/index.html
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