About Vincent Van Gogh in the history of fine art
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- Startpage
- About Vincent Van Gogh in the history of fine art: Page: 1 | 2 | 3
- The sermons of Vincent Van Gogh: Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
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Sacred "Art for praising God" changed to "Art for truth"
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It is a very popular belief that "honest art" must always legitimise itself with a higher purpose. When the Enlightenment focuses on nature and the powers and laws in nature, art must help to seek truth. The happy future of all mankind depends on deepening scientific and social truth. Newton was "the new Mose".
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The artists added truth from an additional dimension. Romanticism emphasised that the railway systems then under construction will not run smoothly without the emotional background of fine art.
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"Emotional art" as the protestant version of "Art for truth"
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Protestants do not owe God "blind but correct faith under a God-sent priests guidance". Protestants owe God honest emotional engangement. Passion. But they have no magic influence on their final fate. Access to heavens is a gift. Period.
The heart of the socialist cleric Vincent van Gogh was burning of emotions and hungry for engagement for a higher purpose. His sermons see God manifesting himself also in worn shoes, worn faces of the poor, in potatoes. Later he praises Gods glory in cornfields.
For the sake of his mission he studied the effects of complimentary colors to create maximum emotion, even mystic elation. Matthias Gruenewald, El Greco and Vincent van Gogh were artists taken by deep emotions, going to extremes of religious or quasi-religious mystic exaltation: All of them invented extreme shocking color effects. All of them would have accepted the fate of martyrdom.
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The late Francisco Goya is very different: The emotions are those of van Gogh - but not expressed with colors. His strongest tales are in black and white! Goya is not showing emotions in landscapes. He told stories of demons. A century later, Professor Sigmund Freud delivered the scientific analyse of exactly these demons.
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"Art for art's sake" the sophisticated offspring from some sacred and lots of profane art
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It serves no purpose other than art itself. Many people say that this is wrong, cheap, frivolous, shallow and immoral. They do not permit art without an engagement or at least some propaganda for God, the poor, peace, love, environment, the third world, against multis, injustice etc.
Raphael was the greatest virtuoso of all painters. No wonder that he was much more interested in his perfection than in the story of Madonnas family. Despite the fact that Raphael come from the "sacred art sector" he made "Art for art's sake" as nobody before him. Many people felt that it lacks "higher legitimation". But it was simply ridiculous to deny the fact that Raphael had inspiration and zest. Reluctantly the fine art establishment and ist chronist Vasary accepted a "Sophisticated art for art's sake" sector in its history of art.
Left: Raffael 1483-1520, Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican for Pope Julius II., fresco Glorification Disputa of the holy altar sacraments, detail
St. Stephan beside the throne of the St. Trinity
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The "Not-art entertainment" sector of profane art
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The fine-art establishment guards the borderline between "Sophisticated art for art" and "Not-art entertainment". There is this solid wall with watch-towers, mine-fields, poisonous snakes and big signals "BEWARE OF NOT-ART AND ITS ARTIST-IMPERSONATORS".
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Random examples of different tempers in fine art
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The sectors are not a question of quality but of personal temper.
We refuse all liabilities for this list!
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Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Cezanne, Bosch, the late Goya, Munch, Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, Kuniyoshi
Johann Sebastian Bach, Messiaen, Webern, Murray Perahia (Daniel Barenboim: "Murray wants to be right. I am happy with beauty."), St. Paul, Dante, Lessing, Voltaire, Goethe, Melville, Dostojewsky, Tolstoi, Victor Hugo, Umberto Eco.
Paul Klee: "The realities of art grow out of dreams, ideas and phantasy. Hidden secrets are becoming visible."
Left: Hieronymus Bosch 1450-1516, detail Vanity table with scenes to the seven deathsins
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Vincent van Gogh , Michelangelo, Gruenewald, Bosch, el Greco, Rousseau, Ensor, Egon Schiele, Appel, Jackson Pollock, Georgia o'Keefe, Hokusai
Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Arthur Rubinstein, Martha Argerich, Balzac, Baudelaire, Rimbaud
Left: Van Gogh "Sunflowers" 1889 (Detail)
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Left: John James Audubon 1785-1851, Haiti, Scarlet Ibis
America has a great tradition of drama in nature, be it mountains, whales (Melvilles Moby Dick), birds or flowers.
Click also the Visipix.com facsimiles of the incredible "Birds of America" by Audubon
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Left: Gustav Klimt 1862-1918, The black hat
Raphael, Paul Gauguin, Fragonard, the early Goya, Degas, Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, Jeff Koons, Utamaro, Hiroshige
Mozart, Chopin, Strawinski, Gershwin, Vladimir Horowitz
Reception hall of the Academy: Saul Steinberg, Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas, Leonard Bernstein,
Identified great not-art entertainment: Bernard Buffet and Moise Kisling (not so great), Franz Lehar, Frederick Loewe (My fair Lady), Lloyd Webber, Agathe Christie, Stephen King, Karl May
The fathers of 20th century art:
Paul Cezanne became the father of Surrealism, Cubism, Structuralim, Cinéma verité etc. Vincent van Gogh became the father of expressionism, fauvism, art brut etc. Paul Gauguin became the father of Jugendstil, Art and decoration etc
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An exemplary incident: Edgar Degas excursion from beauty to truth
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Edgar Degas was very rich, very fond of painting, of horse races, young ballerinas and classical dance. His pictures are among the most beautiful in history. He shared the artistic goal of beauty with Paul Gauguin and purchased a lot of his pictures, but no van Goghs.In 1882 he created his favorite work of art and engaged himself to uncompromising truth: The lifesize and dressed up sculpture of a 14 year old ballerina.
Nobody else knew body and soul of his subject as precisely and as lovingly as Degas did. The fine art scene in Paris hated it. The public was irritated - even offended - when Degas confronted it with this unexpected "thing" way off his established tracks of breathtakingly beautiful sets of ballerinas and horses in delicately balanced colors. Uuaah: Univiting cold dark bronze instead of glamorous rosy teeny skin! The scandal lasted many years. In 2000 it was again in the news: "Sotheby's sold Edgar Degas bronze sculpture titled "Little dancer of 14 year" for $ 11,5 million, described as the ultimate sexy commercial object by certain specialists".
(Quote from : www.artcult.com/na87.html ).
Degas other excursion went into photography. Again he was in search of truth after so much decoration.
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