Vincent van Gogh mentions how one will not find trompe l’oeil in his paintings because he did not have any type of technique when it came to painting. Van Gogh tries to capture the essence in the drawing because he is always working directly on the spot. He wanted to rid people of their preconceived ideas of technique and surprise them with his irregular strokes and roughness. When he describes the painting of the asylum garden he focuses on the colors. He compares the colors to different emotions, for example he says that the colors red ochre, green, grey, and black heighten a sense of anxiety that his companions often suffer from. Van Gogh also describes another painting of a field with colors of lilac, green, yellow, and a bright white sun
The flowers face many angles and are all different, most have contrasting shades of green leaves surrounding the petals and varying stem widths and lengths. This creates interest throughout the painting. To complement the bright yellow flower petals, Van Gogh has detailed a baby blue background with small, vertical and horizontal brush strokes. This contrasts well with the yellow flowers and helps to separate them from the yellow foreground. Also, to break all the yellow sections, he has cleverly used a lighted yellow tint on the bottom half of the vase, rather than shades, which he has used to outline the petals of the flowers. In doing this and by also adding light to the front petals and vase, Van Gogh has added a third dimension to his painting. Like Olley, Van Gogh has painted this artwork in warm colours to create a joyful and uplifting artwork to look at.
In my research / readings of my chosen Artist, I found a lot of information about them that I will descibe individually. Based on the biography, It has been stated that Vincent “was a most well known post-impressionism Artist, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, he was highly emotional, lacked self-confidence and struggled with his identity and with direction.” (Templeton Reid) In the late 1800’s is when Vincent basically made the decision to become an Artist, in which he wanted to provide some type of Happiness because he was able to create beauty (Templeton Reid). As you review the art chosen above by Vincent Van Gogh, you will notice the colors used were dark i.e. Greens, Oranges, Blues, with splashes of yellow to create the sun, which led me to believe that maybe this was when he was in the dark place of his life. In the Van Gogh painting, I see big trees with the nice bright sun shining over the blue water, while looking at the trees it makes me feel safe because of the openness of the surrounding space, also the brightness of the sun and the coolness of the water makes me calm and relaxed, it’s just something about being in nature that gives me a sense of peace and direction, nothing to distract or disturb me.
I image him creating this amazing painting while sitting in his room and looking out his window early in the morning, or late at night. I think the rich blue colors make the painting seem less depressing and actually makes the photo have a much more charming feel to it. I think this is interesting because you would think van Gogh would draw something darker since he was basically locked up and couldn’t
Perhaps illness so influenced the artistic style of Van Gogh, but the picture turned out completely different to all that the artist wrote so far. This is not a Van Gogh, who was known. In the canvas, there is tension, anxiety, dense colors and warm shades of olive-mustard. On the contrary, here there is some kind of lightness, airiness, and transparent weightlessness. On the manner of execution, the pattern resembles Japanese prints: iris field full of peace, a lightness, and transparency. "Irises" are simple and unique, they are striking in their serenity and the ability to remove the internal stress of everyone who saw at least reproduction. Painting simply breathes watercolor, translucency and make to look at it more than one hour.
The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras have produced many great painters that are still relevant to this day. Among these painters is Vincent Van Gogh, who created hundreds of paintings in a span of a short ten-year career. The three articles by Friedman, Schapiro and Bhattacharyya all analyze Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows based on the artist’s physical and mental state, but differ in their approaches (Fig. 1).
According to Getlein (2013, pp. 89) color is a main element in all forms of art. Though I feel Van Gogh treats this element much differently than we know it to be. He mixes colors into hues that our minds may not actually see when we look at something. In the painting Wheat Field with Cypress Trees, the sky as well as the trees, consist of yellows, oranges, and greens, completely creating and imagining something seemingly far greater than reality (Figure 2). I think this use of color creates energy within the image, an energy representing the feelings he may get when he was viewing the real object.
Vincent Van Gogh was a master of the Post-Impressionist art movement; he created works that conveyed strong emotions through the simplest of elements. In Avenue of Poplars in Autumn, Van Gogh again shows his mastery of brushwork and color, giving the viewer a scene of a person walking from a home near dusk down an avenue lined with spindly poplars. Made in October of 1884, the painting seems to accurately reflect the season with red and brown leaves stubbornly adhering to the trees. The initial feeling of this piece is one of peace and calm. Autumn is a time for being with family and avoiding the cold. But the longer the viewer looks, the more they realize that this painting seems to show the opposite of a serene scene, creating an uneasy atmosphere. The feeling only grows when they see the shadows that lick the edges of the trees, the bar-like ruts in the road, and lone figure that walks steadily away from the empty house. In Avenue of Poplars in Autumn, Van Gogh strives to create a forbidding and frightening atmosphere through dark and contrasting colors, limited space, skewed balance, straight and diagonal lines, movement, and the subject matter of the painting, all to represent his emotional response to the scene.
Van Gogh based his paintings on the observable world around him, but he wanted to paint beyond the superficial reality of nature and express its mystery and power through an impulsive and spontaneous approach to painting. Self Portrait (dedicated to Gauguin) exhibits this desire. Although based on an observed scene, van Gogh uses non-naturalistic colors for expressive purposes. For example, van Gogh’s choice to paint a self-portrait on a baby-blue/light turquoise background was a radical step away from a naturalistically-colored background that would be seen in a Realist self-portrait (i.e.
Van Gogh is probably one of the most interesting painters concerning tonality. His purposeful usage of one color in a body of work is a strong reference to emotion (particularly in his portraits). His expressive brush work swirls the blues, and slight yellow and green, around his face. Even his skin has a bluish hue. These elements describe a somber or sorrowful state of mind. Its as almost if the troubles around him are seeping into his skin (like the blue).
Perhaps he had come to Arles for the sun and for him, it was an immense joy to live in such bright bedroom, bursting with colors. What is also fascinating about this piece of art is how the painter highlights the simplicity of his bedroom through the medium of color: « the pale lilac walls, the floor of an old brown, the chairs and bed chrome yellow, the blood red cover, the orange little table and the blue basin”, as the painter describes it. Van Gogh asserted that he wanted to express a complete rest by handling all these different shades2. The color black, which could be evocating a certain form of anguish, is almost nonexistent in this painting. Only the frame of the mirror and windows is black. We wonder if this could mean that Van Gogh was afraid of his future and afraid to face up to reality.
Vincent Van Gogh was formed by his social, cultural and historical context. This is expressed clearly in the underlying stories of both paintings, Starry Night, 1889 and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. Both of these paintings portray a narrative relating to Van Gogh significantly as he emotionally connects to the subject in each painting. Van Gogh’s aim of these subjective works was to express meaning through colour and express the painting to a more personal emotion for the viewer. Van Gogh belonged to a small style of Post Impressionism which was a reaction against Impressionism and their formality.
Van Gogh's use of line really gives depth and character to the piece. The first line that caught my eye was the line outlining the bottom of the bed. The strong stroke really gives you a sense of distance between the bottom of the frame and the floor. Had it been a thin line like those to depict the floorboards, it would look like the bed was sitting directly on the floor. His use of brush strokes and the thickness of them vary immensely in the painting to create depth. The strong strokes of
Several aspects and themes turned out to be vivid in his works. For instance, vibrant colors through the use of diverse brush strokes proved Van Gogh’s work to be unique in terms of master and perfection of the technique. This aspect has also been quite evident as it has strongly influenced modern forms of art work. In the same manner, emotions and expressions have also been seen among his works as brought out by the colors (Desborde and Kimball
High doses of thujone will also cause a person to see objects in yellow, which may also be the reason why he loved the color yellow. Yet, due to Van Gogh’s extreme commitment to religion, and enthusiastic speed in this art pieces, many doctors also assumed Van Gogh could have been bipolar. Van Gogh’s episodes were always followed by exhaustion, and depression, and eventually suicide (Meier-Graefe 46). Therefore, bipolar may be a logical reason of Van Gogh’s mental condition. Though, there may have been many arguments of Gogh’s mental condition, there is still a final agreement that throughout his Van Gogh still created intriguing art for the world to see.
Most colors within the visible light spectrum hold specific emotions that are conveyed to individuals by artists through their pieces of art. Van Gogh carefully incorporated both vibrant and dark colors in his iconic painting Café Terrace at Night, of which span across a vast array of emotions. One of the colors that stand out when you first observe the painting is the vibrant yellow used for the exterior of the café. The color yellow is known within the art community as a cheerful and warm color, helping the café to come across as an inviting gathering place to the individuals observing the painting. Another color that Van Gogh used which quickly grabs