Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Farm­house in Provence, by Vin­cent Van Gogh. 1888.

There are, of course, hun­dreds of beau­ti­ful regions in the world. Too many to see in one life­time. So we must pick and choose care­fully. Pick and choose care­fully where to visit and where to live – if we have that choice and chance. Provence is one among hun­dreds, but unique. Unique being a word we can apply to those hun­dreds of places as well. And so it goes. Thou­sands, if we talk about towns, vil­lages, cities, and so on. So far, in this life, my favorite places are in Ire­land and France. But I hope to see much more of the world. Much more.

When I stud­ied Art His­tory in col­lege, I would take a class and be over­whelmed by the great­ness of this or that artist, this or that period of Art, and think: This is it. The best. I won’t find some­thing I like more than this. Until I did. And I con­tin­u­ously did. And then it all seemed to come together for me. Great­ness every­where, if you look care­fully, study care­fully, pay atten­tion, give your atten­tion to that beauty and that truth. You don’t need to cre­ate hier­ar­chies then. You don’t need to rate things.

Places are like that too. Trav­el­ing is like that. It’s the best until you see some­thing else. Noth­ing can com­pare, until you see some­thing else. And then step back. You stop rat­ing things.

I loved the Pyre­nees as well. And Nor­mandy. And Brit­tany. So many dif­fer­ent parts of France seemed the best to me. Until the next stop. And the next. And then I stepped back.

The above paint­ing is one of Van Gogh’s finest. Though it’s rarely talked about or placed among those paint­ings we think about when we think about Van Gogh. It is per­haps too com­posed, too quiet, not wild enough. But, to me, it cap­tures the magic of the land and Van Gogh’s brush­strokes, the magic of his encounter with Arles, and pre­vi­ously with Japan­ese prints. He called Arles the Japan of the South and wanted the sun of Provence to alter what he painted, to take out details he saw as unim­por­tant, to mix and blend and fuse all things under that sun.

View of Arles with Irises, by Vin­cent Van Gogh. 1888.

This paint­ing is even more con­trolled for Van Gogh. Though he said he wanted the sun to wash away cer­tain things, he retained great detail here. Van Gogh described the pic­ture for his brother Theo:

“… a vast field of bright yel­low but­ter­cups, a ditch full of irises with green leaves and pur­ple flow­ers, in the back­ground a town, a few gray­ish wil­lows, a strip of blue sky. A small town sur­rounded by a field of yel­low and pur­ple flow­ers – you know, it’s just like a Japan­ese dream.”

 

We humans often feel the need to com­pare things, to sit­u­ate them inside our own biogra­phies. Van Gogh painted that. His brush­strokes were like lay­ers of visions he still held in his mind, seen else­where, seen yes­ter­day, merg­ing with the present. The past and the present. The sun of Provence merg­ing Van Gogh’s biog­ra­phy with that land. Time and space. Places and years gone by. Nos­tal­gia like col­ors placed on top of col­ors, beside other col­ors. Cre­at­ing now.

Per­haps the lib­er­a­tion of the can­vas helped do that. The lib­er­a­tion of brush­strokes. Their rise above the can­vas. Their break­away rev­o­lu­tion from the hid­den. As if past painters were ashamed of the process of paint­ing. As if past painters wanted to hide that biog­ra­phy, that story, that deam of Japan.

Related Posts

1. Cezanne’s Provence
2. Van Gogh’s Arles at Night
3. Van Gogh’s Nightsong
4. Van Gogh’s Letters
5. After the Vortex