My first impressions on van Gogh

As I’ve been making my way around European art museums, I’ve realized I am a big fan of Impressionism. The movement started in the late 19th century, actually with a group of artists in Paris.

The name “Impressionsim” was based on a work done by Monet and was originally intended to be satirical.

The most fundamental characteristic in Impressionist paintings is light. Paintings use visible brush strokes, though still relatively small, to depict a specific moment in time. I am normally attracted to the use of colors, and the subjects are typically nature or humans, which I like as well.

With my visits to Amsterdam and Paris, one post-Impressionist artist in particular has really caught my eye – the infamous Vincent van Gogh.  After his aspirations of becoming a pastor failed, he moved to France, where he was influenced by the Impressionist painters, and he went on to create thousands of phenomenal artistic works, in my opinion.

"Almond Blossom," which I saw at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, has been my favorite Van Gogh painting so far.

Our tour guide in Montmartre told us some interesting information about Van Gogh’s life. Never selling a single painting, Van Gogh experienced little success. He suffered from mental illness – he liked to eat paint (yellow was his favorite flavor, conveniently since he painted the sun a lot) and he had a constant ringing in his ears (which might explain why he cut one off and gave it to a prostitute). His vision was fuzzy as well, so there is speculation that “Starry Night” depicts how the scene actually looked to Van Gogh.

He committed suicide at the age of 37. Shortly thereafter, his career took off. He served as the inspiration for many other important artists, and his style became very popular. It’s so ironic to me that many artists live lives of  “failure,” and are then worshipped after they die. Just think of how much money people pay to view and acquire his works, but when he actually could have used the money, he was starving. 

I'm very intrigued by his life and his work. Van Gogh is definitely someone I want to study more, and now I'm adding the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC to my list, so I can check out Starry Night and some of his other works.