VISIT TO THE VAN GOGH LIVE EXHIBITION IN BRISBANE.

Vincent Van Gogh would have to be one of my favourite all time artists.  I love his style, I love his use of colour and his work has always fascinated me, so when I saw that the Van Gogh Live Exhibition was coming to Brisbane,  I was determined to find a way to go to it...

My good friend Barb is also a huge fan of Vincent Van Gogh and she had already booked and paid to go to this very exhibition when she was heading to France last year, before Covid hit and all of our travel plans got cancelled. 

The reviews for this experience was amazing and inspired us to prepare to transcend time and space as we accompanied our  art hero on a journey through the Netherlands, Arles, Saint Remy and Auvers-sur-Oise where many of his timeless masterpieces we created.

The exhibition is set to an evocative classical score, with a thrilling display of over 3000 inspirational images which transform every surface that surrounds you.  It gives you an opportunity to not just look at his spectacular paintings but to actually step inside of them and feel their power...

The exhibition was set up at Northshores in Brisbane, almost next door to Eat Street Markets...

Eat Street Markets...

The display is set up in a specially built venue which measures a huge 25,000 square feet and it was designed by Australian Anna Cordingley.  

Althought we have seen Van Gogh works in real life in galleries in Europe on our travel overseas, but this was a whole new way to experience these masterpieces, as it gives visitors the unique opportunity to immerse themselves into Van Gogh's artistry and truly venture into his world.   Traditions of tiptoeing through silent galleries and viewing paintings from afar in quiet contemplation are forgotten as you find yourself interacting with art in ways we could never have imagined.

From start to finish you are surrounded by a vibrant symphony of light, colour, sound and fragrance that has been called an unforgettable"multi-sensory experience.

His masterpieces come to live, giving you the sensation of walking right into his paintings, a feeling that is simultaneously enchanting, entertaining and education.  You get a chance to view these super-scale artworks from new angles and discover unique perspectives...

As we had pre booked and pre paid for our tickets we just had to show them as we walked through the door.  Admission charges were pretty reasonable only costing us $37.  Considering how wonderful it was, we  thought it was money well spent...

The first area you walk into is the "Interpretive Area" which provides you with important information about the experience and also details the life and works of Vincent Van Gogh.  It also offers fascinating insights into his most famous works and it definitely whets the appetite for what lies ahead...

 

From the  Interpretive Area we headed to the Van Gogh's Bedroom display.  This gives you an opportunity to walk into a life sized representation of Van Gogh's bedroom and have your photo snapped in his room.  This is one of his most famous pieces of work.

Vincent Van Gogh was born on 30th March in  1853 and was one of the most well-know post-impressionist artists, for whom colour was the chief symbol of expression.  He was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland.  He was the son of a pastor, bought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere.  He was a highly emotional person who lacked self-confidence and struggled with his identity and direction.

He believed that his true calling was to preach the gospel, however, it took years for him to discover his calling as an artist.  Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist, Vincent had already experienced two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman and a preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium) where he was dismissed for over zealousness.

He remained in Belgium to study art, determned to give happiness by creating beauty.  The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters which he completed in 1885.  In that same year Van Gogh went to Antwerp where he discovered the works of Rubens and purchased many Japanese prints.  

In 1886, he went to Paris to join his brother Theo who was the manager of Goupil's Gallery.  In Paris Van Gogh studies with Corman, inevitably meeting Pissarro, Monet and Gauguin. Having met the new Impressionist painters, he tried to imitate their techniques; he began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brush strokes of the Impressionists' style.

 

Unable to successfully copy the style, he developed his own more bold and unconventional style.  In 1988, Vincent decided to go south to Arles where he hoped his friends would join him and help found a school of Art. 

At "The Yellow House", Van Gogh hoped like-minded artists could create together.  Gauguin did join him but with disastrous results.  Van Gogh's nervous temperament made him a difficult companion and night long discussions combined with painting all day undermined his health.  Near the end of 1888, an incident led Gauguin to ultimately leave Arles.  Van Gogh pursued him with an open razor, who stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a portion of his own ear lobe off.    He then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.  

In May of 1890, after a couple of years at the asylumb, he seemed much better and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr. Gachet.  Two month later,  in 1980, he died from what is believed to have been a self-inflicted gunshot wood "for the good of all."  During his brief careet, he did not experience much success.  Out of over 900 paintings that he painted, he sold only one painting, lived in poverty, malnourished and overworked.

The money he had was supplied by his brother, Theo and was used primarily for art supplies, coffee and cigarettes.

 

Van Gogh's finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brush stroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature.

In spite of his lack of success during his lifetime, van Gogh’s legacy lives on having left a lasting impact on the world of art. Van Gogh is now viewed as one of the most influential artists having helped lay the foundations of modern art.

After reading a lot of the information in the Ïnterpretive Room" we headed into the Sensory 4 Gallery.  From the moment we walked into this Gallery we were blown away by the powerful immersive experience that awakens the senses and literally transports you inside Van Gogh's greatest works.  The works are set to an evocative classical score and was a truly moving experience that will live long in our memories...

Despite only working for 10 years - from the age of 27 up until his early death at 37, Vincent Van Gogh was incredibly prolific.  He produced more than 900 paintings and many more drawings and sketches, which works out at nearly a new artwork every 36 hours....

 

 

 

 

 

The Potato Eaters, completed in 1885, is considered by many to be Van Gogh's first great work of Art.  At the time of its creation, Van Gogh had only recently started painting and had not yet mastered the techniques that would later make him famous.  This could attribute to the interesting look of the piece as well as the  overall feeling produced from the painting.

Van Gogh wished to create his first masterpiece that could boost his reputation as a developed artist; his goal was to paint human figures that did not appear to be awkward, but rather existing naturally.  Portraying the figures in a dark room with light from an oil lamp, however, proved to be a bit too extreme for his newly acquired artistic skills.  The outcome of all of these factors, in turn, made the painting more appreciated in the art community then if Van Gogh has succeeded in his original task..

One of the things I am thankful for, is photographing a lot Vincent Van Gogh's quotes.  I have enjoyed going back over them and reading them and getting an insight into the person that he was....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Largely  self-taught, Vincent started his career copying prints and reading nineteenth century drawing manuals and books.  Hi technique grew out of the idea that to be a great painter you had to master drawing first.  He felt it was necessary to master black and white before working with colour, and so he focused on learning the essentials of figure drawing and depicting landscapes in correct perspective.

It was only when he was satisfied with his drawing technique that he gegan adding in colours and his bold palette became one of the most recognizable features of his later work.

Van Gogh completed over 1,000 drawings in total and regarded drawing as a basic task enabling him to grow artistically and to study form and movement.  Drawing was also a means for him to channel his depression.

Van Gogh's drawings are special due to the fact that his depiction of figures, light and landscape can be admired without the need for colour.  The artist drew using pencil, black chalk, red chalk, blue chalk, reed pen and charcoal, although he often mixed mediums when drawing.  He drew on a variety of paper types and used any material available to him.  

Drawing allowed Van Gogh to capture light and images more quickly than with painting and it was often the case that he would sketch out his vision for a painting before starting the painting itself.

As well as drawing, Van Gogh also produced nearly 150 watercolour paintings during his lifetime.  Although these did not feature his unique brush stroke textures, the watercolours are undeniably Van Gogh because of their bold vibrant colours.  Initially Van Gogh would use watercolours to add shades to his drawings but the more he used them, the more these pieces became works of art in their own right.

In 1882 Van Gogh began experimenting with lithography and went on to creat a series of ten graphic works:  nine lithographs and one etching.  The Potato Eaters was intended for the marketplace and he made a lithograph of the piece so that it reached a broader audience and in an attempt to earn himself some money.

 

 

 Vincent Van Gogh painted over 30 self-portraits between the years 1886 and 1889.  His collection of self portraits  places him among the most prolific self-portraitists of all time.  He used portrait painting as a method of introspection, a method to make money and a method of developing his skills as an artist...

 

 When he first began painting he used peasants as models.  After this stage, he worked more on experimenting with his use  of colour in painting landscapes and flowers, primarily because he could not afford to pay models. 

Many artists have drawn inspiration from Vincent’s self-portraits. They have been reproduced an infinite number of times since the early 20th century.

The self-portraits put a face to the man who became the archetype of the artist as tortured genius. The yellow straw hat is now firmly associated with Vincent and his love of the sun and the colour yellow.

Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night is considered among the greatest works in western art and is definitely the most famous work of Vincent Van Gogh.  This painting was  painted towards the end of his life in 1889 and was  painted this from memory during the day.

 It depicts the view outside Van Gogh's sanitarium room window at Saint-Remy-de-Provence in France.  The work shows the artists's interest in astronomy and a study made by the Griffith Park Observatory demonstrates that Vincent represented the Moon, Venus, and several stars in the exact position they occupied that clear night. 

The artist considered "The Starry Night," which one day would rank among his most famous works, to be a failure, according to what he wrote to his brother.

Though Van Gogh revisited this scene in his work on several occasions, "Starry Night" is the only nocturnal study of the view and this masterpiece is now on display

Although Van Gogh was in the asylum, he lived well and was allowed more freedom than any of the other patients. 

 

 If attended, he could leave the hospital grounds; he was allowed to paint, read, and withdraw into his own room. He was even given a studio. While he suffered from the occasional relapse into paranoia and fits - officially he had been diagnosed with epileptic fits - it seemed his mental health was recovering.

Unfortunately, he relapsed. He began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he plunged into depression. Accordingly, there was a tonal shift in his work. He returned to incorporating the darker colors from the beginning of his career and Starry Night is a wonderful example of that shift. Blue dominates the painting, blending hills into the sky. The little village lays at the base in the painting in browns, greys, and blues. Even though each building is clearly outlined in black, the yellow and white of the stars and the moon stand out against the sky, drawing the eyes to the sky. They are the big attention grabber of the painting.

 The Starry Night is based on van Gogh’s direct observations as well as his imagination, memories, and emotions. The steeple of the church, for example, resembles those common in his native Holland, not in France. The whirling forms in the sky, on the other hand, match published astronomical observations of clouds of dust and gas known as nebulae. At once balanced and expressive, the composition is structured by his ordered placement of the cypress, steeple, and central nebulae, while his countless short brushstrokes and thickly applied paint set its surface in roiling motion. Such a combination of visual contrasts was generated by an artist who found beauty and interest in the night, which, for him, was “much more alive and richly colored than the day.”

Starry Night is one of the most recognized pieces of art in the world. It is absolutely everywhere, too. It can be seen on coffee, mugs, t-shirts, towels, magnets, etc. Honestly, it sometimes feels as if the painting’s fame has exceeded that of its creator. It is a magnificent piece of art. That Starry Night resonates with so many people is a testament to how its beauty is timeless and universal.

In Van Gogh's first months in Paris, he stayed in his brother Theo's small apartment on Rue Laval. Vincent's behavior could be disruptive and unnerving to Theo and others. A friend of Theo's wrote of Vincent, "The man hasn't the slightest notion of social conditions. He is always quarreling with everybody. Consequently Theo has a lot of problem getting along with him." As means of calming himself, Vincent painted fall fruit in the autumn of 1886, which he imbues with seemingly "supernatural vitality and beauty." Multi-colored, contrasting colored brushstrokes radiate in a circle from the fruit with an "aura of electrical radiance."

Still Life with Apples, Pears, Lemons and Grapes  was Van Gogh's opportunity to explore Blanc's recommendation about combining colors: "If one brings together sulfur (yellow) and garnet (dark red), which is its exact opposite, being equidistant from nasturtium (orange) and campanula (blue-mauve), the garnet and sulfur will excite one another, because they are each others' complementaries." In the background, Van Gogh used short brushstrokes of light blue and pink, giving the impression that the fruit is sitting in a basket. Van Gogh may have seen  Claude Monet's  Still Life with Apples and Grapes in Paris, but while the subject matter is roughly the same, the composition is not. Monet paints the fruit on a diagonally placed table to "anchor his composition in space." Having removed any form of distraction, such as a table or background, Van Gogh placed each piece of fruit by itself, creating a "semi-abstract, decorative effect."

 

Basket of Apples was made in 1885 when Van Gogh experimented with Delacroix's color theory. To his brother Theo, Van Gogh wrote: "There is a certain pure bright red for the apples, then some greenish things. Now there are one or two apples in another color, in a kind of pink – to improve the whole. The pink is the broken color, created by mixing the first red and green mentioned. This is why there is a connection between the colors. Then I painted a second contrast, in the back- and foreground. One was given a neutral color by "breaking" blue with orange; the other the same neutral color, only this time changed by adding a little yellow."

Which colour combinations create the strongest effect? This is one of Van Gogh's many studies of colour. He painted two types of grapes. Their colours are set off against strokes of paint in contrasting hues: blue against yellow and green against red.

Van Gogh often tested his colour combinations before painting, with threads of wool in various hues. Only after that would he use his valuable paint. He had an attractive red lacquer box in which he kept his balls of wool. That testing method was used for this painting.

Among the many many paintings that Vincent painted in his lifetime, were still lifes depicting flowers.  He loved nature and flowers and they offered him the opportunity to portray nature at its best.  He often painted ordinary flowers that grew in the countryside near his home as subject matter for many of his flower oil paintings. 

Some of this floral art is considered among his most famous masterpieces. For example, his sunflower series is perhaps the most famous of all his works. The flowers he chose to paint were put into floral arrangements standing in vases and flowers laying down on the ground. He also loved to paint flowers in their natural habitat, the countryside, and gardens. From van Gogh’s depiction of sunflowers, irises, roses, poppies, cornflowers, myositis, and chrysanthemums, he brought life and emotion to his work, putting his unique perspective on it.

Today Van Gogh is loved for his passion which is indicative of his work. His sunflower painting is one of the most loved of his flower oil paintings. Other favorite flower paintings by van Gogh are of irises.

In 1889, Vincent painted many paintings of irises.  They were painted whilst he lived at the asylum at Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint Remy-de-Provence in France.  Each one of his irises are unique.  He carefully studied their movements and shapes to creat various curved silhouettes bounded by wavy, twisting and curling lines.  The cropped composition, divided into broad areas of vivid colour with monumental irises overflowing its borders, was probably influenced by the decorative pattering of Japanese woodblock prints.

Between the years 1886 and 1890, Vincent van Gogh completed seven different paintings featuring poppy flowers. Van Gogh did not have money to pay models, so still-life painting became more practical.

His paintings of delicate almond blossoms against a clear blue sky is from a group of several paintings of blossoming almond trees. Van Gogh painted this to celebrate the birth of his nephew and namesake, son of his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo. He chose the branches of an almond tree – a variety that blossoms as early as February in the south of France, where it announces the coming spring. The subject, the bold outlines, and the positioning of the tree in the picture plane are borrowed from Japanese printmaking.

One in a series of sunflower oil paintings by Vincent van Gogh. The series show sunflowers in all stages of life, from full bloom to withering. The paintings were considered innovative for their use of the yellow spectrum, partly because newly invented pigments made new colors possible.

Some of his most famous works are his Sunflower series.  He painted a total of twelve of these canvases, although the most commonly referred to are the seven he painted while in Arles in 1888 to 1889.  The other five he painted previously while in Paris in 1887. 

There are many pieces within this series of paintings ( each is clearly identifiable as a Van Gogh work) in which there are only minor differences that separate them.  The overall layout of the painting along with the positioning of the actual sunflowers usually remains the same in similar paintings.  

As Vincent anticipated in 1889, the Sunflowers finally became his and served - comgined with self-portraits, as his artistical arms and alter ego up to the present day;  no retrospective Van Gogh exxhibition since 1901 voluntarily missed to include them, and a wealth of forgeries, as well as record setting price paid at auction, acknowledges their public success.

“Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey” by Vincent van Gogh depicts the trainee doctor at Arles Hospital, where Van Gogh was taken for treatment of his mental illness. After cutting off part of his left ear in December 1888, Vincent van Gogh was taken to the hospital of Arles and placed in the care of Doctor Felix Rey.

Van Gogh (1853-1890) painted the "Portrait of a one-eyed man" (1889) when he was admitted to the mental hospital of Saint Paul-de-Mausole.  This man's one eye has a remarkably intense blue-green colour. Van Gogh used that same colour in the background of the painting. The other eyelid is shut. The man may have been blind in one eye or had an eye disease. He was one of the patients in the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy (FR) where Van Gogh stayed for a year. Although Van Gogh was sometimes frightened of the other patients, he did make portraits of two of them. The end of the cigarette is burning brightly, as if the man has just taken a puff.

Van Gogh, excited to have a model for a portrait, worked on the portraits of a Zouave in June 1888 in Arles. Van Gogh described him as a boy, with a small face, large neck and intense eyes. A half-length portrait was made of the tanned man with bright colors he called a "savage combination of incongruous tones". The Zuoave's uniform was blue with red-orange braids, a red cap and two yellow stars on his chest, all placed against the background of a green door and orange bricks. Unsatisfied with the painting, he called it "ugly and unsuccessful", but thought the challenge might expand his artistic skill. Van Gogh also made a drawing, of which he was not particularly pleased, and a painting of the Zouave against a white wall.

Joseph Roulin became a particularly good, loyal and supporting friend to Van Gogh during his stay in Arles during 1888-1889. In 1888, van Gogh moved to Arles, in hope of exploring more artistic sensation in the unspoilt countryside. But after he moved here he found himself lonely and isolated. Joseph Roulin worked as the postmaster at the station in Arles. Van Gogh went there frequently to send paintings to his brother Theo in the Netherlands and they became close friends. The friendship with Joseph Roulin and his family offered Van Gogh comfort and companionship. Roulin tended to van Gogh in the aftermath of psychotic episode in which Van Gogh menaced Gauguin and then sliced off a part of his own ear. Roulin continued seeing Van Gogh when he committed to the psychiatric hospital in Arles, and writing to Van Gogh's family to reassure them of his health, and providing constant solace to the recovering artist.

Van Gogh painted about 20 paintings for Joseph Roulin and his family, and he was very proud of these portraits and wrote to his brother Theo about them. He mentioned "the modern portrait" excited him the most.

 

Of the five versions of Van Gogh’s portrait of Augustine Roulin, wife of his friend the postmaster of Arles, the present canvas is the one the sitter chose for herself. Van Gogh remarked that "she had a good eye and took the best." He began the portraits just before his breakdown in Arles, in December 1888, and completed them in early 1889, calling them "La Berceuse," meaning "lullaby, or woman who rocks the cradle," indicated by the rope held in the sitter’s hand, which is attached to the unseen cradle.

  

 

 

 

 

 

The Portrait of Doctor Gachet  below is one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings. This painting is of a doctor Van Gogh took interest in painting that had connections with other famous painters. It's notable for a number of reasons. It was painted in the last few months of Vincent's life and the subject has been the focus of a great deal of controversy. How competent was Doctor Gachet?  The man was a psychiatrist who was interested in helping Van Gogh. The expression reflected on in the portrait is said to be that of their desolate time.  Vincent queried the relationship between himself and the doctor when he wrote to his brother Theo  when he stated "First of all, he is sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much"

Vincent Van Gogh is instantly recognizable by his reddish hair and beard, his gaunt features, and intense gaze. Van Gogh painted some 36 self-portraits in the space of only ten years. They tell us that he had red hair, green eyes and an angular face. Yet each of those faces is different. Vincent himself wrote:

‘People say – and I’m quite willing to believe it – that it’s difficult to know oneself – but it’s not easy to paint oneself either.’

 Perhaps only Rembrandt produced more self portraits, and his career spanned decades. For many artists, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the self-portrait was a critical exploration of personal realization and aesthetic achievement.

Many artists have drawn inspiration from Vincent’s self-portraits. They have been reproduced an infinite number of times since the early 20th century.

The self-portraits put a face to the man who became the archetype of the artist as tortured genius. The yellow straw hat is now firmly associated with Vincent and his love of the sun and the colour yellow.

Vincent produced his self-portraits because he wanted to practise painting people.

The majority of them – over 25 – were done while he was in Paris (1886–88). He was short of money in that period and struggled to find models. So the artist chose the simplest solution and painted himself.

 His self portraits often tell us about his personality as Vincent often presented himself as restrained and serious in his self-portraits, with a look of concentration on his face..

All the same, something of Vincent’s personality can be found in each self-portrait. He described the last one he did in Paris as ‘quite unkempt and sad’ [...] something like, say, the face of – death’. That’s how he felt at the time: mentally and physically exhausted.

In his Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, 1887, Van Gogh was all eyes and ears in Paris. Here we see clearly how he studied and applied the technique of the Pointillists. But instead of painting points, he uses short stripes of paint in different directions. He even created a kind of halo around his head. It serves as a sort of prelude to what would later become his trademark swirls

This, the last of Van Gogh's self-portraits and one of the greatest, was painted only months before his death.

The compulsive, restless all over ornament of the background, recalling the work of mental patients, is for some physicians evidence that the painting was done in a psychotic state. But the self-image of the painter shows a masterly control and power of observation, a mind perfectly capable of integrating the elements of its chosen activity. The background is similar to the rhythms of The Starry Night which the portrait resembles also in the dominating bluish tone of the work. The flowing, pulsing forms of the background, schemata of sustained excitement, are not just ornament, although related to the undulant forms of the decorative art of the 1890s; they are unconfined by a fixed rhythm or pattern and are a means of intensity, rather, an overflow of the artist's feelings onto his surroundings. Besides, the powerful modeling of the head and bust, so compact and weighty, the wall pattern appears a pale, shallow ornament. Yet the same rhythms occur in the figure and even in the head, which are painted in similar close-packed, coiling, and wavy lines. As  attention shifts from the man to his surroundings and back gain, the analogies are multiplied; the nodal points, or centers, in the background ornament begin to resemble more the eyes and ear and buttons of the figure.

Van Gogh started to paint very late in his life, when he was 27 years old. He never received any formal training. His first self-portraits, like this one, are dated 1886, which is also the exact time he portrayed himself as an artist. Notice the sombre colors he uses. He would soon abandon them after seeing the work of the Impressionists in Paris.

 

His Self-Portrait as a Painter, 1887-1888 was the last work that he produced in Paris. At the time, Vincent felt exhausted by this frantic city and that shows in his face. He told his sister, Wil, how he had portrayed himself: “wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth, stiffly wooden, a very red beard, quite unkempt and sad.”

Though sad and melancholy, he made a statement. Van Gogh here is a painter, a modern artist who uses a new painting style, with bright, nearly unblended colours.

After his Paris episode, Vincent van Gogh moved to Arles in hopes of creating a community for artists to exist in mutual supportiveness and encouragement. He invited Paul Gauguin, an artist whom he had befriended in Paris, to come stay with him.

 

Three of his portraits also hint at his illness.  On 23 December 1888, Vincent cut off his left ear in a state of total confusion. It would be the first of a series of mental breakdowns. He was reluctant to discuss the incident in his letters, but he did ‘report’ on it in two self-portraits.

Vincent did not portray himself as a sick, broken man for the sake of effect or to arouse pity. He was convinced that painting would help him to heal. ‘I retain all good hope’, he wrote to Theo.

Japanese printmaking was one of Vincent’s main sources of inspiration and he became an enthusiastic collector. The prints acted as a catalyst: they taught him a new way of looking at the world. Very few artists in the Netherlands studied Japanese art. In Paris, by contrast, it was all the rage. So it was there that Vincent discovered the impact Oriental art was having on the West, when he decided to modernise his own art.

Vincent adopted these Japanese visual inventions in his own work. He liked the unusual spatial effects, the expanses of strong colour, the everyday objects and the attention to details from nature. And, of course, the exotic and joyful atmosphere.

Nature was the point of departure for Vincent’s art throughout his life. It was the same for Japanese artists, and he recognised that. At the same time, Japanese prints gave him the example he needed to modernise.

Vincent was keen to respond to the call for a modern, more primitive kind of painting. Japanese prints, with their expanses of colour and their stylisation, showed him the way, without requiring him to give up nature as his starting point. It was ideal.

“Café Terrace at Night” by Vincent van Gogh depicts the terrace of the café on the Place du Forum in Arles, France in the night. The night is painted with no black in the sky, it features only a blue sky with Van Gogh’s unique star motifs.

The Cafe is illuminated with sulfur pale yellow and citron green. Van Gogh painted the view looking south towards the lit terrace of the famous coffee house.

He contrasted the brightly lit Cafe with the darkness of the rue du Palais, which led up to the wall of buildings and towards the tower of a former church, which is now Musée Lapidaire.

On the right, Van Gogh painted the light from the shop windows as well and some green branches of the trees surrounding the place.

The painting is not signed, but van Gogh mentioned it in three letters. After finishing this painting, he wrote a letter to his sister:

This painting of a simple chair set on a bare floor of terracotta tiles is one of Van Gogh’s most iconic images. It was painted in late 1888, soon after fellow artist Paul Gauguin had joined him in Arles in the south of France. The picture was a pair to another painting, Gauguin’s Chair (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). They were to be hung together, with one chair turned to the right, the other to the left.

Both chairs function as surrogate portraits, representing the personalities and distinct artistic outlooks of the two artists. While Van Gogh’s chair is simple and functional, Gauguin’s is an elegant and finely carved armchair. Van Gogh’s chair, on which he placed his pipe and tobacco, is shown in bright daylight. Gauguin’s, with two novels on its seat, was painted at night and is illuminated by a candle and gas light.

While he was in Arles, Van Gogh made this painting of his bedroom in the Yellow House. He prepared the room himself with simple furniture and with his own work on the wall. The bright colours were meant to express absolute ‘repose’ or ‘sleep’. Research shows that the strongly contrasting colours we see in the work today are the result of discolouration over the years. The walls and doors, for instance, were originally purple rather than blue. The apparently odd angle of the rear wall, meanwhile, is not a mistake on Van Gogh’s part – the corner really was skewed. The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print. Van Gogh was very pleased with the painting: ‘When I saw my canvases again after my illness, what seemed to me the best was the bedroom.’

 

 

 

Van Gogh painted this wheat field (by some referred to as a cornfield) with cypresses when he was in a mental asylum in Saint Remy in the south of France. He painted this when he was allowed to make short walks and paint outside of the asylum. He was particularly impressed by the cypresses he saw there as he felt that this tree reflected some of his emotions.  ​Van Gogh liked this painting so much that he repeated this painting three more times.

Wheatfield with Crows is one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings. It is often claimed that this was his very last work. The menacing sky, the crows and the dead-end path are said to refer to the end of his life approaching. But that is just a persistent myth. In fact, he made several other works after this one.

Van Gogh did want his wheatfields under stormy skies to express 'sadness, extreme loneliness', but at the same time he wanted to show what he considered 'healthy and fortifying about the countryside'. 

Van Gogh used powerful colour combinations in this painting: the blue sky contrasts with the yellow-orange wheat, while the red of the path is intensified by the green bands of grass.

The last room to go through as you ended the experience was the Immersive Sunflower Room.  This mirrored room complete with hundreds and hundreds of sunflowers was amazing and provided the perfect background to get some good selfies.  Of course we indulged even slipping off our face masks for a photo or  two.  It was lots of fun and it will always be a reminder for us of this venture into the world of Vincent Van Gogh...

From here you entered back out into the foyer into the gift shop.  We had a bit of a look around and I took a few photos.  It could have been tempting to buy a few things, but as we are seriously in decluttering mode trying to get rid of a lot of our possessions, we resisted the urge.

We did however, head to the little cafe which was set up very much like one of Vincent's paintings.  We were all a little thirsty and we were going to be hitting the road to head back to the Sunny Coast as soon as we left, so we just grabbed a cold drink and a chocolate crossiant.  Very expensive... $6 for a Pepsi.  Still it hit the spot and it was nice to just sit and chat and debrief together and share our favourite parts of the experience.  We all loved it.

Expensive Pepsi at $6 a small bottle

It was just after 4pm when we left to head home.  It was a long slow journey as we hit the afternoon traffic.  Instead of taking an hour to get home, we were on the road for over and hour and a half.

Bumper to bumper traffic for most of the way home...

 

 We've had a great day.  I must admit, it was so nice to share this experience with my good friend Barb, we both love the work of Van Gogh, so it was nice to experience this together...