Van Gogh, Face to Face: The Portraits

by George S. Keyes, Roland Dorn, Judy Sund

Just one month before his suicide in 1890 Vincent van Gogh wrote to his sister, "What impassions me most -- much, much more than all of the rest of my meitier -- is the portrait, the modern portrait". During his short, intense career he revolutionized portrait painting, decisively influencing its course in the twentieth century.Published to accompany a major touring exhibition, Van Gogh Face to Face brings together for the first time the great portraits from all periods of the painter's life, augmented by reproductions of many of his most important other paintings. The result is an unprecedented and wonderfully revealing study of van Gogh's development as an artist, making it possible to see his evolving approach to the genre as he pushed back the boundaries of portraiture, culminating in the masterworks of his final years.

Six original essays by leading art historians discuss the key aspects of van Gogh's portraits at different stages of his career. George Keyes begins by setting the paintings in the context of Dutch art, demonstrating the formative influence of masters such as Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Lauren Soth discusses the stark but carefully finished drawings made by van Gogh during his early years in The Hague. George Shackelford examines the pictures made during van Gogh's stay in Paris, his first works to show the influence of the Impressionists and of contemporaries such as Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

In Arles in the south of France, van Gogh entered a great period of feverish productivity, and his portraits -- of peasants, villagers, and himself -- are among his most powerful pictures. Roland Dorn examines the major works, in particular the revolutionary sequenceof portraits of the Roulin family in which van Gogh's experimentation with color is brought to fruition. After his breakdown, van Gogh moved first to an asylum in St. Remy and then to Auvers, a small village north of Paris. Judy Sund discusses the portraits van Gogh painted as he struggled to keep his sanity, including the famous pictures of Dr. Gachet and the final haunting self-portraits.

Joseph Rishel concludes by examining the impact of van Gogh's work on his contemporaries and his pervasive influence on later artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Munch, and Francis Bacon. Interspersed with the essays is a detailed, four-part chronology of the painter's life, beautifully illustrated with both his portraits and other important paintings.

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction, Art History, Reference

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[mehg-hen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean this is a coffee table book, so you can't really cuddle up with it.

Anyway, it was produced as part of an exhibit in Detroit. I found it very life affirming and made Vince seem much more human and not just a guy marking time until he gets weird with a hooker. Some of the portraits, yes, are boring, but some make your eyes roll around in your head and make you want an MRI that will explain what the hell he is doing to your brain with color. My favorite news was that Van Gogh had an actual friend! Gaugin! Vince's letters were nice! He organized a bunch of exhibits in Paris! Painters liked him! People brought him flowers to paint! He was manic depressive/had epilepsy/was crazy but was often very kind and tender borderline naive. i.e. *not *pathetic i.e. *not *only *worth *his *paintings as a human being, which I've found depressing about Van Gogh. Apparently he was always trying to capture the spirit of people in a portrait--and in this book you can see it, and why he finds photography too clinical. He also got a fisherman's hat and geeked out very hard about it and then kept putting it on guys from the local poorhouse who never fished in their life.

Gaugin was like "well you know, you're the guy who just paints sunflowers" at which point Van Gogh totally lost it and cut his ear off. There are month to month chronologies of him which are extremely nice, i.e. "he took a weekend trip and looked at boats." that makes me want to write a moving screenplay. Van Gogh heard jokes he liked and ate dinner with people. That is extraordinarily fantastic, because to look even at the book cover, you think if you saw him on the street you'd jump back into whatever store you were close to and pretend to get an emergency call from a relative.

Also there's a painting he did of himself that is scary, and he sent it to Gaugin and was like "haha! Don't I look like death?! haha! oh well--anyway, send me the portrait of yourself already!" There is another more exhaustive biography that explains how terrible his personality really was, but this book introduces you to a very relatable, naive idealist which sorta makes him more tragic, because he feels so much more real.

Here's his poet friend Eugene Boch. Vincent said "hey, if you want to come to the south of France for a visit, my brother will pay for it. I know you're broke."

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eta: er, well I just read 2 chapters of that biography heh and well, heh, heh heh heh.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love him so much sometimes I cry about it. I don’t know why we connect with certain concepts and figures but I think even the not knowing is what contributes to the beauty and admiration of a thing! It started with my dad playing Vincent by Don McLean in our kitchen when I was younger- it moved something in my heart and left me changed! I feel it deeply in every museum I step in & he continues to inspire my creative processes. Love the guy.

[Jaimie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems a little weird to me that before the exhibition hosted in 2000 by the Detroit Institute of Arts (and chronicled in this catalogue) that there had never before been a show dedicated to the portraits painted by Van Gogh, but I guess everyone has previously been focused on his landscapes, cafe scenes, and sunflowers. I definitely agree with the curators that Van Gogh’s portraits are worth a dedicated examination, even though “Starry Night” will always be my favourite of his pieces, since each piece shows the same dedication to his artistry that one would expect from one of the best painters. Careful brushstrokes, a unique sense of colouration, and vivid characterization are present throughout this collection, and I was pleased to discover some unexpected themes emerge from this curation. Portraits are a typical focus for many artists contemporary and historical as a means to earn a living prior to the photographic medium becoming more accessible, but I was surprised to discover that Van Gogh’s portraits eschewed this trend to focus on subjects of his own choosing and (when he ran out of subjects) self portraits. Even though some of his subjects were dressed in costume or given a fixed scope of depiction by the artist, Van Gogh’s preoccupation with character (unique or not is up to the viewer) is an interesting revelation, and gives a further depth than the base artistry portrayed by his technique. While I might not have liked, per se, each of the portraits herein, I appreciated the chronological act of collection for this exhibition, and in particular found the evolution of his technique away from the Dutch masters and into his own style to be excellently portrayed. The accompanying text was also well narrated (barring the missing chunks from my maligned thrifted copy…) by the curators, each having a unique voice that brought Van Gogh’s paintings together with their historical context well and illuminating the core themes of the exhibition. I’ll have to replace this volume at some point with a unmarred copy, since the previous owner did a great job of tearing out half pages and sections (seriously /rolls eyes), and peruse it again for a more in depth look into the many faces of Van Gogh.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! As most of us, I connect van Gogh with sunflowers, starry night and doing crazy things. I never realized he had painted so many portraits. His sense of color carried over into his portraits also. Stupendous.

[Patsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful portraits and self-portraits. I will always love van Gogh's art as well as how he used to think about people and art.

[Alberto Arredondo estrada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy interesante seleccion del trabajo de retrato de Van Gogh