Creative Friendship and The Making of Modern art Vincent van Gogh

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Creative Friendshipand The Making of Modern
artVincent van Gogh Paul Gauguin
His coming will alter my manner of painting and I
shall gain by it. Vincent van Gogh
awaiting the arrival of Paul Gauguin Arles,
September 1888
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Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch Post-Impressionist /
Expressionist, 1853-1890 (37 years)Paul Gauguin,
French Post-Impressionist / Symbolist, 1848-1903
(55 years)
Paul Gauguin, Self Portrait Dedicated to Vincent,
Les Misérables, 1888, 40 years old
Artistes maudits (martyrs to the establishment,
criminals like Christ or Jean Valjean of
Hugos Les Miserables) le bon Vincent et le
grièche Gauguin
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait Dedicated to
Paul Gauguin, 1888 35 years old (as a Buddhist
monk)
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(left) Vincent Van Gogh, Two Peasant Women
Digging Potatos, oil on canvas,Nuenen,The
Netherlands,1885 (right) Jean-François Millet
(French, 1814-1875) Gleaners, oil, 1857
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Vincent Van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, 1885, oil,
32 x 45 inches.
I have tried to emphasize that these people
eating their potatoes in the lamplight, have dug
the earth with those very hands they put in the
dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and how
they have honestly earned their food. Van
Gogh, 1885
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Van Gogh, Potato Eaters, 82 x114 cm Nuenen
April,1885. Primitivism
Adolphe William Bouguereau (French Academic
Painter, 1825-1905 Home from the Harvest, 1878
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With its calculated ugliness and religious
overtones, The Potato Eaters (1885) is also an
homage to Rembrandt's The Supper at Emmaus (1648)
in the Louvre
Note steaming potatoes and lamp create a halo
effect around the child, the roof beams
recession is an expressive use of perspective to
suggest divine rays, small print of the
crucifixion behind the young man. These
strategies appear later in paintings such as
The Night Café, Arles Summer, 1888
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• I should be desperate if my figures were
  correct. I do not want them to be academically
  correct.my great longing is to learn to make
  those very incorrectnesses, those deviations,
  remodelings, changes in reality, so that they may
  become, yes, lies if you like but truer than
  literal truth.
• Van Goghs emphasis

Van Gogh, Head of A Peasant Woman with White Cap,
Nuenen April, 1885, oil on cardboard, one of
many studies for The Potato Eaters
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Paul Gauguin in 1873 at 25 years
In 1890 at 42 years
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Flora Tristan (1803 - 1844) grandmother of Paul
Gauguin, a socialist writer and activist, one of
the founders of modern feminism. Her father was
an Arequipa-born Peruvian colonel of the Spanish
Navy, and her mother was a French woman. Tristan
wrote the best selling Peregrinations of a Pariah
about her travels to Peru.
Gauguin, Portrait of the Artists Mother
(Aline), 1894
Political cartoon lampooning Tristans feminism,
c. 1830
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1882 Stock Market Crash
Gauguin, Mette in an Evening Dress, 1884
Paul Gauguin, Self Portrait, 1885 in Copenhagen,
Everyday I ask myself if I mustnt go to the
attic and put a rope around my neck.
Mette Gauguin and the five children, c. 1885
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Paul Gauguin (left), The Garden in Winter, rue
Carcel, 1883, oil on canvas, private
collectionCamille Pissarro (right), Rabbit
Warren at Pontoise, Snow, 1879, oil on canvas,
Chicago Institute of Fine Art
Gauguins Impressionist paintings adopted
Pissarros subject matter and thin, straw like
brushstroke.
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Paul Gauguin assumed the role of renegade
(maudit) artist in 1885Paul Gauguin, Four
Breton Women Gossiping, 1886First trip to Pont
Aven 4 months. Brittanys peasant types were a
pre-industrial subject that suited Gauguins
emerging Primitivism
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Paul Gauguin, (left) Portrait of Charles Laval in
Profile, 1886 (right) Martinique Landscape,
1887Gauguin and Laval left for Panama and
Martinique in 1886 and spent several months until
illness forced them to return to France.
I had a decisive experience in Martinique. It was
only there that I felt like my real Self, and one
must look for me in the works I brought back from
there rather than those From Brittany, if one
wants to know who I am. Paul Gauguin (1890)
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Paul Gauguin, Among the Mangoes, Martinique,
1887, purchased by Theo van Gogh, Parisian art
dealer and Vincents devoted brother
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Vincent Van Gogh in Paris Van Gogh Gauguin
Meet in the Autumn of 1887

• Everything his hands make has a gentle, pitiful,
  astonishing character.
• Vincent van Gogh on the art of Paul Gauguin,
  Paris, 1887

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Two Sunflowers, 1886-7, is one of two paintings
of sunflowers that van Gogh presented to Gauguin
in an exchange of art works shortly after their
first meeting in Paris. It depicts a subject that
would come to symbolize Van Gogh's hopes and
beliefs. The two cut blooms signify his yearning
for a symbiotic union, but sunflowers had
multiple other associations from the religious
(the cosmos, faith, devotion to God) to the
aesthetic (ideal beauty).
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The broken brushstrokes of bright spring colors
as well as the choice of subject a view of the
Seine on the outskirts of Paris mark the
transformative influence of Impressionism on Van
Gogh following his move to Paris. Compare Van
Goghs 1887 painting with a 1868 composition by
Claude Monet
Claude Monet, (French, 1840-1926)On the Bank of
the Seine, Bennecourt 1868, oil on canvas
Van Gogh, Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy
(Asnières), 1887, oil on canvas
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Van Gogh, Interior of a Restaurant, 1887,
Paris, short-lived experiment with pointillist
technique
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Compare Van Gogh pre-Paris 1883 (left), and in
Paris 1887 (right)
Van Gogh, Wheatfields, 1887
Van Gogh, Farmhouses, 1883
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Compare Van Goghs brushstrokes 1883 (left) and
1887 (right)
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JaponismeVincent van Gogh Paul Gauguin were
both influenced by ukiyo-e woodblock prints
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Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige),
oil on canvas, 1887 (Paris)
Hiroshige Ando, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857,
woodblock print
The Montmartre gallery of Samuel Bing was next
door to Théo van Goghs Paris apartment. Bing
kept thousands of Japanese prints in stock.
Vincent became an avid collector of ukiyo-e
prints.
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Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Père Tanguy,
1887-88, oil on canvasJaponisme and emergent
Expressionism
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Studio of the North in Pont Aven,
France,1888Cloissonism and JaponismPost-Impress
ionist (Symbolist) linear, flat patterning,
subjective rather than objective vision, no
visible light source
Paul Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon Jacob
Wrestling with the Angel, 1888 (Pont Aven)
Emile Bernard, Breton Women in a Green Meadow,
1888 (Pont Aven)
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Both Van Gogh Gauguin appropriated Japanese
perspective and composition
Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon Jacob
Wrestling with the Angel, 1888 (Pont Aven)
Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige),
oil on canvas 1887 (Paris)
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The Studio of the South
Vincent Van Gogh, Vincents House (The Yellow
House), Arles, 1888
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Vincent van Gogh, The Poets Garden, September
1888Painted to decorate Gauguins studio before
his arrival in Arles
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Friendship PortraitsThese two intense
personalities lived together in Vincents Yellow
House in Arles from October 23 to December 26,
1888
Paul Gauguin, Les Misérables, self-portrait
dedicated to Vincent, 1888, (painted in Pont
Aven and brought to Arles) 40 years old
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait as a Buddhist
Monk, dedicated to Paul Gauguin 1888, (Arles) 35
years old
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Van Gogh, The Night Café, 1888, painted just
before Gauguins arrival in Arles at the same
time Paul Gauguin was painting The Vision after
the Sermon in Pont Aven. The two were
corresponding by letter, many through Theo van
Gogh.
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The expressive psychological power of modernist
perspective and color. For Van Gogh the
saturated vermilion and color contrasts conveyed
the dissolute atmosphere of the café, the
terrible passions of humanity. For Gauguin the
unnatural palette conveyed the quasi-mystical
state of the Breton womens imagination
Vincent an Gogh, The Night Café, 1888
Paul Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon Jacob
Wrestling with the Angel, 1888
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Van Gogh, Van Goghs Room, 1888, painted early
October, just before Gauguins arrival in Arles.
Van Gogh thought this room ought to rest the
brain, or rather the imagination. . . . The broad
lines of the furniture again must express
inviolable rest.
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Painting together in Arles
Vincent Van Gogh, Les Alyscamps, 1888 Grounds
viewer in reality smokestacks, factories of the
Paris-Lyon rail line, sarcophagi
Paul Gauguin, Les Alyscamps (Champs Elysée), 1888
A Symbolists mystical locale
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Paul Gauguin, The Night Café, 1888
Vincent van Gogh, Madame Ginoux, 1888 slashed on
in an hour
Van Gogh, The Night Café, 1888
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Van Gogh, Memory of a Garden at Etten 1888
Gauguin, Women of Arles, 1888
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Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, 1888. Synthesis of
Gauguins theories with his own. Symbolism and
simplification of detail applied to a favorite
Van Gogh biblical subject
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Gauguin, Madame Roulin, 1888
Van Gogh, Madame Roulin, La Berceuse both 1888
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Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh Painting
Sunflowers, 1888 It is certainly I, but its I
gone mad (Van Goghs response to Gauguin upon
seeing this painting)
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Aftermath
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Van Gogh, Vincents Chair, 1888-9
Van Gogh, Gauguins Chair (with Candle)
December,1888
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Multiple allusions Symbolism, Primitivism - and
self-identification with Van Goghs
post-ear-cutting identity a saint or Christ-like
(here bloody and earless) figure martyred to his
art as to a faith.
Moche portrait jug, Peru, c.700 CE
Gustave Moreau, Orpheus (mythical martyr of
Western culture), 1865, French Symbolist
Gauguin, Self-portrait Jug, 1889, 7 5/8, glazed
stonewear. Created several weeks after leaving
Arles.
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Gauguin gives the Savior his own features and the
red hair of van Gogh, making an explicit
self-identification with Christ and Van Goghs
myth. Gauguins distanced, anthropological
attitude toward religious subjects is gone.
Paul Gauguin, Agony in the Garden, 1889
Gauguin, Letter to Van Gogh November 1889
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Paul Gauguin, Be in Love and You Will Be Happy,
1889
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Paul Gauguin, Self-portrait with Halo, 1889, oil
on wood, 31x20
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. . . it gives me enormous pleasure when you say
the Arlésiennes portrait, which was based
strictly on your drawing, is to your liking. . .
. Take this as a work belonging to you and me as
a summary of our months of work together. For my
part I paid for doing it with another month of
illness, but I also know that it is a canvas
which will be understood by you and by a very few
others, as we would wish it to be understood.
Van Gogh
Gauguin, Madame Ginoux, drawing, 1888 (Arles)
Van Gogh, Madame Ginoux, 1890 one of five oil on
canvas copies he did of Gauguins 1888 drawing
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Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, Saint Rémy,
June 1889, oil, 29 x 36"This morning I saw the
country from my window a long time before
sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which
looked very big." Rooted in imagination and
memory (influence of Gauguin) as well as optical
sensation (his own Impressionist-based theory) as
well as Netherlandish landscape sensibility.
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Dr. Paul Gachet, Van Gogh on His Deathbed, July
29, 1890
Van Gogh, Crows over the Wheat Field, July 7-10,
1890 Two weeks before suicide
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• Paul Gauguin remained preoccupied with Vincent
  Van Gogh as he composed his last memoir, Avant et
  Après, in the winter of 1902-1903 shortly before
  his death (1903).

Paul Gauguin, a page from his memoire, Diverses
Choses with a drawing by Van Gogh glued in by
Gauguin with reflections on collaboration,1896-7