{"id":721,"date":"2010-01-25T15:13:39","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T15:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp\/2010\/01\/no_need_for_the_cliche-killer.html"},"modified":"2010-01-25T15:13:39","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T15:13:39","slug":"no_need_for_the_cliche-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2010\/01\/no_need_for_the_cliche-killer.html","title":{"rendered":"No need for the Clich\u00e9-killer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year I had the good luck to be shown around the exhibition of Van Gogh’s letters at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam by Ann Dumas, who is the curator of “The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters,” which has just opened at the Royal Academy in London (and continues until 18 April).  <\/span>So I am in the happy position of being able to tell you what almost no one has noticed – that the Amsterdam show and the London show are almost totally different.  <\/span>The Amsterdam show was actually a rehanging of its own collection, so as to show the letters in the appropriate places in the gallery. Save for the letters, there is an overlap of only the 12 paintings loaned by the Van Gogh Museum in the RA exhibition, out of a total of 65 major paintings. There are also 30 drawings, plus 35 original letters – and this may well be the last time the letters are shown in a public exhibition, as each exposure to light increases the fading of the ink and its reactivity with the paper.  <\/span>Amsterdam just does not lend its most iconic pictures (the ones the tourists come to see, after all), such as “Irises,” “Starry Night” and “The Potato Eaters.” <\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

            <\/span>This
\nmeans that Ms Dumas has had to do a great deal of work to put together a show
\nof this magnitude and brilliance. But what a success it is – the more so as
\nsome of the great pictures are unfamiliar, a real and unexpected bonus when the
\nsubject is the world’s best-known, most popular artist. Given  that <\/span>we probably shan’t see the letters again, this is the Van Gogh show of our
\nlifetimes, for which we owe thanks to BNY Mellon’s sponsorship, and to the work
\nof Ms Dumas’s co-curators in Amsterdam, Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke
\nBakker, the editors of the spectacular Thames & Hudson five-volume (and weighing 12kg) “Letters.” It’s free on-line, but nothing beats handling the print
\nedition: every time reference is made to an image, whether it’s a picture by
\nVan Gogh or another artist, the image is reproduced in the margins of or on the
\ngorgeous, art-paper page.<\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>The
\nLondon show is rich with loans from the other Dutch big Van Gogh collection,
\nthe Kr<\/span>\u00f6ller
\nM\u00fcller Museum at Otterloo, who have loaned the 1889 “Still-life” with a Plate
\nof Onions,” while “Van Gogh’s Chair” (1888) from the National Gallery hangs
\nside by side with Amsterdam’s “Gaugin’s Chair”,  <\/span>painted about the same time. The hanging of these paintings,
\non the freshly painted cerulean walls of the RA, is a staggering example of the
\ngreat installation of this show. As everyone who’s ever seen these side-by-side
\nhas commented, these are portraits without faces; Van Gogh’s luminously yellow,
\nupright wooded  <\/span>chair, with his
\npipe and a twist of tobacco and its woven seat, standing on the cool, red
\nquarry -tiled floor contrasts with Gaugin’s dark wood, elaborately curved
\nchair,  <\/span>on its upholstered seat a
\nlit candle and some books, while it stands on a warm, patterned carpet.  <\/span>The pictures date from the time when
\nthe two painters were living together, sharing “The Yellow House” (also in the
\nLondon show) in Arles, acting out Van Gogh’s doomed communal-living fantasy. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>I
\nhave to confess that when I went to Amsterdam, it was with a heavy heart and
\nVan Gogh-weary eyes – from over-exposure to the cult of these same iconic
\npictures, or the ubiquitous reproductions of them, and too many hearings of Don
\nMcLean’s “Starry, starry night” and “Vincent’s eye of china blue.” <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>Several
\nthings won me over.  <\/span>First, the
\nletters. On their evidence, Van Gogh was a great writer – in three languages.
\nEven in English he is observant, witty, and has a large vocabulary that he puts
\nto striking use. I was bowled over, too, by so many of their illustrations not
\nbeing sketches of work he was doing, but copies of finished work, to show his
\nbrother Theo what he was doing – and in detail. I find him noble as a thinker,
\ntoo, daring and brave. Having been a religious nut, a born-again evangelical
\nbore for Jesus, he managed to give up his near-narcotic dependence on religion
\nwithout becoming an atheist bore. When he realized belief is foolish, he had
\nthe courage simply to put his foolishness behind him, and not be bothered about
\nit again.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

            <\/span>Seeing
\na huge body of work all at once reminded me that Van Gogh had (nobly to my
\nmind) decided<\/i> <\/span> to become an artist, and
\nachieved greatness as a painter – in only ten years.  <\/span>And the clarity of the stages of this is so marvelous. His
\nsocial sympathies with his peasant subjects culminating in “The Potato Eaters”
\ngive way to his interest in colour and the entirely beneficial influence of
\nJapanese prints on his line. Then there is what you can’t see properly in
\nreproduction, his handling of paint, of textures and his brushwork. It has all
\nbeen a re-revelation for me, a rediscovery that what we all adored as
\nadolescents is good enough to appreciate properly and justly as grown-ups. Now
\nI can even look at “Irises” without feeling the need to reach for a spray can
\nof clich\u00e9-killer.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year I had the good luck to be shown around the exhibition of Van Gogh’s letters at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam by Ann Dumas, who is the curator of “The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters,” which has just opened at the Royal Academy in London (and continues until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-bD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}