In 1914 Clive Bell published an essay in which he declared
that the highest art genre was the one that embraced the idea of ‘significant
form’; an abstraction which inspired the ‘aesthetic emotion’ in those of us who
have the profundity to appreciate art. There is much to be said about this
idea, and in my first entry for this blog I argued that rather than making art
more elitist, there was a potential for abstraction to make art more democratic.
However, I believe that if ever there was an artist who proved there to be such
a thing as the ‘aesthetic emotion’, and one which could be experienced by
anyone, it was Vincent van Gogh.
There is just something about van Gogh. I don’t believe I
have ever met a person interested in art who did not name van Gogh as one of
their favourite artists. In some way he speaks through his insanity and his
heavily stylised works to something vital in the human condition. This is an
idea which I hope to consider more deeply in another post, however, returning
to the idea of the ‘aesthetic emotion’, I would like to bring forward one of
the greatest works in the collection of the Orsay: Starry Night, Arles.
This work presents a night-time river scene in Arles, in the
South of France. In compositional terms the work adopts established theories
and conventions in art practice. The painting plays upon the complimentary
colour combination of blue and orange,* but van Gogh makes the work slightly
colder by mixing in an acidic yellow. In terms of form, van Gogh frames the
work by darkening the area around the top of the work, and through the
inclusion of the grassy riverbank in the foreground. However, these components
merely lay the foundations for a truly exceptional work.
The real strength of many of van Gogh’s paintings –
something that can only be appreciated when directly in front of the work –
lies in the facture of the paint. Van Gogh truly delighted in the medium of his
work, and he applied his paint thickly, almost sculpting the scene in low
relief. In this particular work, the expensively designed lighting scheme of
the gallery directs whites on the brushstrokes from above, thus the lighting on
the river highlights the ripples across the water. It would be nice to believe
that van Gogh intentionally sought to use the environment in this way to
describe the scene he depicted.
This work holds the hint of a narrative. At the head of the
riverbank in the foreground are two small boats, the peasant couple on the
verge before us walk away from the water; the suggestion is that they have
travelled across in one of the boats, an idea which is encouraged by the darker
ripples which lead from the back of the boat to the edge of painting. There is
a discrepancy in this though: the couple appear old and haggard, they certainly
do not look as if they would have the strength to row a small fishing boat. The
juxtaposition of these people within this spectacle of a night setting makes
the background even more magnificent.
These broken people appear several times in van Gogh’s work.
His The Potato Eaters (1885) reveals
up close the battered figures of a French peasant family. Their skin is
hardened and their bodies slightly deformed by the labours that encompass their
existence. This work seems to be part of the atheistic concern for ‘matter’
that Gustave Courbet introduced in the controversial Burial at Ornans, and yet van Gogh relates the scene by the clean
light from a single lamp in the upper centre of the work.
The figures in the foreground of Starry Night, Arles are a metaphor for us. The broken, worldly
beings that stand encased by this magnificent and glorious scene. It is not a
coincidence that I am drawing upon Christian imagery here; van Gogh was a
religious man who for a time sought to serve in the Church, and indeed this
work could be seen as an analogous illustration for ‘light shining in the
darkness’ (John 5:1). The way van Gogh uses lines to evoke the glow of the
stars seems almost childish, but in doing so he indirectly references their
creator; he – the creator artist – relied upon his linear brush to describe
what he sees, the creator God’s way is more perfect. The idea of people as
lights in the world is suggested below the whiter heavenly lights of the sky in
the man-made lights of the town. These lights are not so pure, and often they
are muddied by the shadows of the urban setting, again presenting the idea that
man’s way is imperfect.
Here I return to the idea of the aesthetic emotion. If there
is any way of explaining this phenomenon it is to equate it with a spiritual
experience. This painting is ‘magical’. There is a magnetic pull about the
piece, as if it desires to draw you into it; to fully immerse yourself in the
scene. It is not just beautiful, it is heavenly. It humbles us in our human
states, yet – as with all van Gogh’s works – the scene is viewed through the
lens of a very human soul. The wonder and awe of a simple night-time scene
floods our senses as the stars flood the clouds of pollution with a bold
pigmented blue light.
* Van Gogh would have been aware of the colour theories of
Post-Impressionist and Pointillist Georges Seurat, who developed a technique of
applying unmixed colours to his canvases in small dashes which would then be
mixed by the eye. The theory and practice of using complimentary colours became
more widely used by Post-Impressionists such as van Gogh.
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