Van Gogh-ing to the Museum!

The Husband is awesome. My friend K is awesome. My friend Z is awesome.

K mentioned on Facebook that there was going to be a Van Gogh exhibit nearby, about two hours away. I mentioned it to The Husband, who immediately said, "Book a hotel. We're going."

He knows how I feel about Van Gogh.

My friend Z joined us, which as always, I enjoyed hanging out with one of my oldest and closest friends.

This exhibit had 12 of Van Gogh's works, along with many other works by other artists to demonstrate those who influenced Van Gogh, or were influenced by him.

I love Van Gogh. This will sound ridiculous and I don't care, I always liked Van Gogh, but it wasn't until the Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who that I discovered that I loved Van Gogh.

By no means am I some kind of art critic or art historian. I know what I like. Sometimes, I even know why I like it. I also know what I don't like, and sometimes I can verbalize why I don't like it. As The Husband and Z and I discussed at length, not all art is art just because someone called it art, and some works, while skillfully created, should not be considered art.

How do you decide what is art?

For me, not everything that Van Gogh painted, drew, and sketched was art, but so much of it is. For me, I call it art because it makes me feel something. Because I feel like I can relate to it. Because I feel like I can understand what the artist was feeling.

Van Gogh was well-known to be a troubled man. He suffered from depression, and did not find success as an artist until after his death.

The thing that I like about so many of his works is that they make me sad. It may sound strange to say it like that, but it's true. He was a sad man, and that sadness radiates off of the canvas. Sure, I like Starry Night, everyone likes Starry Night, but he had so many masterpieces. Starry Night looks like he was looking at the sky through tears.

The exhibit we went to did not have Starry Night, but it did have Self-Portrait. I love this one. He looks so angry. Almost hateful. Somewhere beneath the rage in his eyes, I see a sense of self-loathing.

To look into his eyes in this painting is to feel his pain. He is so serious. You can't smile for this picture. You can only try to understand an artist who seems to have been caught by surprise, who did not have time to paste a fake smile on his face, who showed a vulnerability that he didn't necessarily want to show.

How did he paint this? Did he spend his winter of 1886-7 looking at himself in a mirror? Examining every detail of his face, the darkness behind his eyes? Did he struggle to look at himself?

When I have been in the deepest depressions, I have had trouble even looking myself in the eyes in the mirror. There have been times when weeks or months have passed and I haven't seen my own eyes because I couldn't bear to look at myself.

Did he feel some catharsis in painting himself? Did it hurt him to have to look at himself just to get this painting done?

I, too, have suffered from depression at various points in my life. I look into his eyes, and I feel a certain, almost, kinship, and then I saw this:

This is Man with Spade. The write-up next to it said that this was a worker taking a lunch break from digging ditches, but what I saw was a soldier, exhausted, after digging graves. Yes, I know that it's dark, but it is Van Gogh, and again, it felt like grief radiating from the charcoal in the sketch.

A Trunk of a Tree. Not a painting, but a pen and sepia on paper. I love the details in this work. I love that the top of the tree appears very intentionally detailed, with strong lines. I love that the trunk of the tree is remarkably understated, as if added detail would be unnecessary. I just love this.

 Finally, here is Constantin Meunier's Ophelie. It is not a Van Gogh, but I saw this painting out of the corner of my eye and I was drawn to it. The paleness of the figure. The darkness of her gown. The storm clouds to the right, and what looks like a clearing in the sky on the left, as if her troubles are past now that she has taken this final action.

I so enjoyed our visit to the museum, and The Husband was kind enough to buy me goodies from the gift shop. I was very tired, as this was the longest I had been on my feet. What this means is that my impulse control was all but gone, and I wanted ALL the Van Gogh souvenirs from the gift shop. I didn't get ALL of them, but I got two beautiful packs of notecards (who wants to be a pen pal?), stickers, a print, some postcards to put in my journal, and a magnet (that I made Z buy for me).

So there you have it: proof that I can do more than read books and have cancer! Ha!