So 40 years ago, Leo Marchutz, the founder of my school here, said "Van Gogh painted a masterpiece a day, for the last 70 days of his life." So last friday, we took a field trip to try and explore how that happened. Unfortunately, in the last few months of his life, Van Gogh was in Auvers, up north, so we couldn't be where he was then, but he spent a couple very important years in Arles and Saint-Remy, which are about an hour away from Aix. So I spent the week leading up to the field trip reading a brief biography on Van Gogh, written by his sister-in-law (no pressure, Julie) and some of his letters from that period. This was the time in Van Gogh's life when he started having his crazy attacks, and really started going off the deep end, in fact Saint-Remy is the mental institution that he checked himself into after cutting off part of his ear. I've included links to a few of the paintings we were looking at, but unfortunately you might have to copy and paste them to see them. Sorry!
So we started out at 7:30 AM and headed off to Arles. When we got there, we drove to a draw-bridge over a canal that he painted. We walked to the spot Van Gogh would have done the painting had the bridge not been moved about 300 meters to avoid being wrecked, and sat down with a reproduction of the actual painting (http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lg8554+le-pont-de-langlois-arles-1888-vincent-van-gogh-poster.jpg). We then spent the next 2 and a half to 3 hours disecting exactly what Van Gogh had done. We were lucky enough to have beautiful clear blue skies, just like the ones Van Gogh most liked to paint in, and we could really see all the colors in nature. Van Gogh is known, among other things, for his use of color, and seeing the colors he found in nature compared to the actual nature itself was absolutely amazing, and really very inspiring artistically. My work since then has been a lot more adventurous with colors.
Next, we went briefly to an old roman road with tons of sarcophagi that Van Gogh painted (http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/vincent-van-gogh-paintings-from-the-yellow-house-3.jpg). We only were able to spend a small amount of time there, but, again, the colors van gogh found were all really there, and they were amazing to see in real life.
We then went to the mental hospital where he was briefly forced to live by the townspeople, and looked at yet another painting (http://wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/3e75729998cde7c6c1256dd20064bdfa/842acf0a36dc59e4c1256ea7002b3fd7/$FILE/Vincent%20Van%20Gogh-Courtyard%20of%20the%20Hospital%20at%20Arles,%20The.jpg). To look at this one we got to go up onto the second floor.
Then it was time for lunch, but not before looking at one more (http://www.abcgallery.com/V/vangogh/vangogh37.html). In this painting there is a baby tree, which is now a HUGE tree. The bridge has been redone, but you can see what Van Gogh was up to. It was really cool.
For lunch we ate at the cafe Van Gogh painted in his "Night Cafe" painting.
In the afternoon, we went to Saint-Remy and spent some time looking at some more paintings in the actual location. What was amazing is that while he was there, he was largely kept inside, behind barred windows. I could never accomplish was he did behind bars. In particular, we looked at a series of three paintings done of a man cutting wheat in a field. We talked for a long time about what he had done as he painted the first, second, and third in the series, and why he had done it.
I really think the trip is going to have affected my own painting in a big way. Van Gogh's vivid colors give his paintings a kind of life that few other artists have achieved. He was adamant that it was not necessary to achieve the actual colors found in nature, but the relationships between colors. I'd love to get a chance to see some Van Gogh paintings in real life, because, according to my teachers, they'er incomparable to the reproductions. Unfortunately, almost all the good ones are in Amsterdam. So Nick and I are going to get high as balls and look at them in a week.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
shittiest weekend of my LIFE
I had a pretty incredible day yesterday. School is just getting better and better. We spent the last week out in the landscape painting, which was great. It turns out painting is really difficult. But the vision aspect of the school is just getting started. We've spent a lot of time talking about things and looking at things, and I'm starting to be aware of things that I was never aware of before in the world around me, mostly pertaining to color relationships and the way the mind looks at something red and green and purple and takes all that information and tells you you're looking at a green tree. And if I want your mind to go through the same process in looking at my art, I can't just paint a green tree, because the tree is so much more than simply green when you really begin to look. So in order to paint a tree that really looks REAL, I have to break down what my mind is seeing into all the things my eyes are seeing and paint that. It's really a lot to think about, especially when you lack technical training in painting. Anyway, so that's what I've been up to in school. Nothing I would ever be learning at Kenyon.
But yesterday we took a field trip. We piled into the bus at 8:30 AM and headed north along one of the original Roman roads to the Luberon Mountains, where we spent our day in a vast valley. We stopped briefly to take a look at a castle that Camut lived in for a while. When he first found it, it was in complete disrepair, inhabited by gypsies who worked in the vinyards and cherry orchards in the area, picking the fruit. But they weren't supposed to be living in the chateau, so Camut and his other artsy type friends kicked them out, at which point the gypsies put a curse on Camut and his friends, that each would die a violent or unexpected death, which happened. Camut was hit by a car or something, and the others died in similar ways. Weird.
Anyway, after looking at the castle, we went through a ravine that during the war had been controlled by the resistance, and then up along a ridge towards the town of Bonnieux, a town of about 1400 that sits up on the hillside. We sat at a bit of a distance, looking at the way the town sat on the hill, and its relationship with the landscape, for about an hour and a half, just talking about it, making sure we were seeing everything. I'll attach a picture of what we were looking at. The town itself is made up of 16th and 17th century architecture, but the church up at the top is 12th century, and it's pretty amazing. Maybe someone can tell me what the tree made of horizontals on top of the hill is? Anyway, after looking at the hillside for a long time, we had about 40 minutes to explore the town and see everything up close. Beautiful. Then we bought some bread and local cheese and sausage and some pastries and headed across the valley.
All the way across the valley was the town of Lacoste, a little bigger, but not much, and equally beautiful. In Lacoste, we walked down into what used to be a terraced farmland, and is now a terraced oak forest. The trees look more like live oaks in Georgia than anything else, and we picnicked at the site where John, our teacher, had camped out for a month in the forest painting with the founder of our school, Leo Marchutz, back in the 70s. After a nice relaxing lunch, we headed into some other woods to check it out. We wandered around on this wooded plateau, where we found some ruins of old stone farmhouses. The word farmhouse is misleading, because you think of a farmhouse and you think of something quaint and modest. These were huge and elaborate, stone and plaster houses dating back hundreds and hundreds of years. The most recent was 18th century. There was also an old borie, a stone (but no cement) beehive-shaped building that was built during one of the plagues. It's extraordinarily complex inside and really cool looking, with many rooms and a hallway. Very cool.
After we had experienced the woods, we drove to a Cistertian monastery to look at its architecture. We spent the whole time in silence, like the monks do, only talking at the very end to reflect on what we had seen. It was simplistically beautiful, with GREAT acoustics (for the gregorian chants they do 3 or 4 times a day). The way the monastery supports itself is by farming wheat and lavender, which, unfortunately, had just been harvested a few weeks ago, although I can hardly complain because it was still breathtaking.
This week has more painting in store for me, so hopefully I'll start to get better. And then on friday we skip class to go on another field trip to Arles to study the area that Van Gogh loved to paint. After that, on Saturday, we spend the day sailing around off the coast of Marseille. It really stinks here, and I wish I could be back in cold, grey Ohio.
But yesterday we took a field trip. We piled into the bus at 8:30 AM and headed north along one of the original Roman roads to the Luberon Mountains, where we spent our day in a vast valley. We stopped briefly to take a look at a castle that Camut lived in for a while. When he first found it, it was in complete disrepair, inhabited by gypsies who worked in the vinyards and cherry orchards in the area, picking the fruit. But they weren't supposed to be living in the chateau, so Camut and his other artsy type friends kicked them out, at which point the gypsies put a curse on Camut and his friends, that each would die a violent or unexpected death, which happened. Camut was hit by a car or something, and the others died in similar ways. Weird.
Anyway, after looking at the castle, we went through a ravine that during the war had been controlled by the resistance, and then up along a ridge towards the town of Bonnieux, a town of about 1400 that sits up on the hillside. We sat at a bit of a distance, looking at the way the town sat on the hill, and its relationship with the landscape, for about an hour and a half, just talking about it, making sure we were seeing everything. I'll attach a picture of what we were looking at. The town itself is made up of 16th and 17th century architecture, but the church up at the top is 12th century, and it's pretty amazing. Maybe someone can tell me what the tree made of horizontals on top of the hill is? Anyway, after looking at the hillside for a long time, we had about 40 minutes to explore the town and see everything up close. Beautiful. Then we bought some bread and local cheese and sausage and some pastries and headed across the valley.
All the way across the valley was the town of Lacoste, a little bigger, but not much, and equally beautiful. In Lacoste, we walked down into what used to be a terraced farmland, and is now a terraced oak forest. The trees look more like live oaks in Georgia than anything else, and we picnicked at the site where John, our teacher, had camped out for a month in the forest painting with the founder of our school, Leo Marchutz, back in the 70s. After a nice relaxing lunch, we headed into some other woods to check it out. We wandered around on this wooded plateau, where we found some ruins of old stone farmhouses. The word farmhouse is misleading, because you think of a farmhouse and you think of something quaint and modest. These were huge and elaborate, stone and plaster houses dating back hundreds and hundreds of years. The most recent was 18th century. There was also an old borie, a stone (but no cement) beehive-shaped building that was built during one of the plagues. It's extraordinarily complex inside and really cool looking, with many rooms and a hallway. Very cool.
After we had experienced the woods, we drove to a Cistertian monastery to look at its architecture. We spent the whole time in silence, like the monks do, only talking at the very end to reflect on what we had seen. It was simplistically beautiful, with GREAT acoustics (for the gregorian chants they do 3 or 4 times a day). The way the monastery supports itself is by farming wheat and lavender, which, unfortunately, had just been harvested a few weeks ago, although I can hardly complain because it was still breathtaking.
This week has more painting in store for me, so hopefully I'll start to get better. And then on friday we skip class to go on another field trip to Arles to study the area that Van Gogh loved to paint. After that, on Saturday, we spend the day sailing around off the coast of Marseille. It really stinks here, and I wish I could be back in cold, grey Ohio.
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