Vincent

I enjoyed the recently concluded Van Gogh And The Seasons exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. The works came from all over the world; this one, used on all of the promotional material, was loaned by the National Gallery, London.

I love the sense of space provided by the perspective of flat wheatfields, the line of trees and mountain range beyond them and the over-arching blue sky and white clouds. And the sense of movement provided by the brushstrokes in the wheatfield and the conifers and the swirling shapes of the clouds indicating winds blowing this way and that. And the vibrant colours: yellows, greens and blues. A typical Van Gogh painting.

Many of the paintings came from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, for instance;

There were quite a few from the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, including this one;

Others came from the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas and the National Gallery of Washington and the National Gallery of Canada as well as from various foundations.

It’s worth being a member of the NGV for the curator talks and the exhibition previews alone. This is on top of the discounts to all gallery related things. The members preview gives you a viewing that is less crowded than those available once the exhibition opens. And the talks provide background on the artists and put the works in context. Once you become a member I thoroughly recommend you take every opportunity to get to any talks and previews on offer.

I went to both in relation to this exhibition, so got to see the works in relative peace and quiet. And took photos! I know lots of people don’t like this, especially when its crowded. But the gallery encourages the practice and I like to have an aide memoire, not least for the purposes of this blog. Nothwithstanding the fact the photos are pretty terrible!

I’ve seen a number of films and documentaries about Van Gogh so the talk was not as important for this exhibition. Although I did learn that he taught himself English in order to read Shakespeare in the original; a fact somewhat at variance to the vision of a tortured soul usually depicted on screen.

Like the story of his life, Van Gogh’s paintings are very familiar; they have been absorbed into our cultural memory. I’ve seen many over the years in lots of different galleries; especially at a very comprehensive retrospective that was held at the Musee D’Orsay in 2014. That would have included this one which was loaned by the Musee for this exhibition;

As with any exhibition of works by Van Gogh it was full of his usual subjects: wheat fields, trees, flowers, landscapes. Looking carefully at the dates of the paintings you can follow his development as an artist. But for the first time ever, anywhere, according to the curator, the works have been arranged according to the season portrayed. This makes sense given the artist’s focus on, perhaps obsession with, depicting each of the seasons as spontaneously and truthfully, in the moment, as possible. And as the notes on the individual paintings attest, the attempt to do so caused him much anguish.

So ordering the exhibition in this way worked and meant you got a real sense of the importance of the seasons as a subject matter for the artist. And seeing the paintings grouped together like this demonstrates how well Van Gogh achieved his objective. Again and again, painting different things, or the same thing over and over, he captures the essential characteristics of each of the seasons – the vibrant colours of autumn, the bleakness of winter, the delicate hues of Spring and the vibrancy of summer. Here are just three paintings, selected from the many more on display, showing different representations of each of the four seasons.
Autumn

Winter

Spring

Summer

The note accompanying this painting, which is so full of colour, tells us that Van Gogh likened the South of France, where this village is located, to

a coming to life of the brilliantly coloured Japanese woodblock prints he so admired.

This is a nice segue to the next big exhibition to be held at the NGV Hokusai. Perhaps I’ll see you there.