Van Gogh on Art and Artists: Letters to Emile Bernard

by Vincent van Gogh

"In a picture I want to say something comforting as music is comforting," Vincent van Gogh confided to his friend and fellow artist, Emile Bernard. "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize and which we seek to give by the actual radiance and vibration of our colorings." Written in the years 1887 to 1889, these letters are among the most important and relevant sources of insight into van Gogh's life and art. Apart from their fascinating content, they are among the most sensitive and perceptive studies ever published about the man and the artist.
On his decision to make the letters public, Barnard commented, "After reading them one could not doubt his [van Gogh's] sincerity, his character, nor his originality; there, pulsating with life, one would find the whole of him." Indeed, these 23 letters, eloquently translated into English, radiate with their author's impulsiveness, intensity, and mysticism. In one van Gogh "I can't disguise from you the fact that I like the country, having been brought up there — floods of memories of the past, aspirations towards that infinity, of which the sower and the sheaves are symbols, enchant me now as then. But I wonder when I'll get my starry sky done, a picture which haunts me always."
Complemented by handsome black-and-white reproductions of some of van Gogh's major paintings and facsimiles from his letters, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students of art and will be treasured by artists and art lovers alike.

Genres: Art, Biography

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 2003

About the author

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.

Van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence.

Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist, van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he was dismissed for overzealousness. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year van Gogh went to Antwerp where he discovered the works of Rubens and purchased many Japanese prints.

In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarro, Monet, and Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists. His nervous temperament made him a difficult companion and night-long discussions combined with painting all day undermined his health. He decided to go south to Arles where he hoped his friends would join him and help found a school of art. Gauguin did join him but with disastrous results. In a fit of epilepsy, van Gogh pursued his friend with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a portion of his ear lobe off. Van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.

In May of 1890, he seemed much better and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr. Gachet. Two months later he was dead, having shot himself "for the good of all." During his brief career he had sold one painting. Van Gogh's finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature.

Reviews

[Sparrow .]

If you ejaculate too much, you’ll be a lousy artist. That is the main point of this book. (And Vincent was perhaps the worlds most ejaculative artist.) Once every two weeks is best.

But why did Van Gogh kill himself? He doesn’t at all seem suicidal. And he writes just before his death. Maybe he was murdered? By Dr. Goday?

He writes these amazing passages about color in painting:

“I have just finished a portrait of a girl age 12, with brown eyes, black eyebrows and hair, grayish yellow skin, the background white heavily touched out with emerald green, her bodice blood-red with violet stripes, her skirt blue with large orange spots, a branch of pink oleander in her pretty little hand.

“I’m absolutely worn out.…”

Opening at random:

“But I must first talk to you about your own work, about two still lifes you have done and two portraits of your grandmother. Have you ever done anything better? And have you ever been more YOURSELF and more of a person? I doubt it. A profound study of the first thing which came to hand, or the first person who came along, sufficed to produce A REAL CREATION. Do you know why I like these 3 or 4 studies so much? It’s because they have something deliberate, sensible, something solid and self-assured. But you’ve never been closer to Rembrandt, my dear.”

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently finished this book. I very easy read , very informative. It gives you a view of Van Gogh, through his own words, on his thoughts on life and art. Also it includes some of his early sketches of some of his paintings. I absolutely loved it.