Does Arles (Feb 1888- May 1889) periods made Van Gogh the best?
When I was a secondary student, my self-taught drawing skill was influenced by Japanese culture the most, such as manga and illustration. I was also interested in western culture of fine art, but never knew where should I start to learn as they got a huge timeline of history. Strange enough was, instead of studying western art history directly, I found myself got to know Vincent Van Gogh better and better subconsciously through Japanese culture. a As you know Van Gogh is very famous in Japan even though he died ages ago. We can tell by the fact that loads of his works were printed on the daily products like phone case, umbrella, notebook etc. Actually, many of Van Gogh’s works were deeply influenced by Japonism in his latter years. He also collected lots of Japanese prints and reproduced them with oil on canvas. They were obviously extolling each other in different generations.
I have read an evaluation from an article about Van Gogh which emphasised that Arles was the best place for Van Gogh’s creativity, also some of the illustrated story books of him only characterized his life from sojourn in Arles to his death. Unmistakingly, Arles period was his golden age because he had produced loads of masterpieces there, such as Yellow Room, The Starry Night and The Sunflowers series, they are all very emblematic of the Van Gogh nowadays. However, did Arles solely make Van Gogh a legend?
In February 1888, Van Gogh headed south to the town of Arles after two years in Paris, searching a sunny retreat where he could “recover and regain his peace of mind and self-composure.” Meanwhile, he hoped to establish a community of artists there. But aside from Gauguin fateful stay during that autumn, Van Gogh spent almost fifteen months sojourn on his own. It was sad but being alone and living his life apart from the mainstream were a good chance to made up his mind, executed all of the techniques he acquired from avant-grade artists in Paris, for example the Impressionists and the novelties of imported Japanese prints.
The painting Red Vineyards near Arles(Fig.1) which is the only one artwork that has been sold during Van Gogh’s lifetime. Once again he showed his appreciation to peasants by painting the labourer’s life. Instead of the dark palette and coarse application like he did in the early period, he awakened the bright palette which was influenced by Impressionism. He adopted the rapid, broken brushstrokes that barely relate the forms of human bodies, wheat field, river and the trees. Like the Impressionist, the texture of everything in this painting were nearly the same by those short brushstrokes. Mostly pure unmixed colours were used, high intensity emphasising the effect of the sunset. The yellow, orange, blue and deep green colour were depicting the reflection of peasant and sunshine on the river. He portrayed the perspective by reducing the size of the scene and humans at the top of the painting. Also he linearly framed the river and horizon became a directional line which leads us to look up to the right corner.
Unlike his early dark style work The Potato Eater(Fig.2) which depicted the texture with dark and earthy tones and rugged brushstroke, Van Gogh believed that mastery of black and white was an essential skill before working with colour. Kind of traditional composition in use here, he represented the space by using light and shadow on the objects, human faces and the drapery of human’s clothes. By putting a reverse side of a woman in the middle of the painting, her shadow obviously separated the scene into two sides. The gaze from the woman to the man on the left hand side, the edge of the table and the wall on the right hand side became the directional line which both show us those peasants were in a conversation during the meal. Those classical visual elements largely disappeared in latter of his works.
In Red Vineyards near Arles, rather than focusing on composition and space, Van Gogh demonstrated the Impressionist techniques like Claude Monet’s work Woman with a Parasol, facing left(Fig.3) adopted: pure unmingled colours, short and divisiveness brush strokes that barely reveal forms. Emphasised the effects of light and rendered shadows or highlights in colour instead of neutral white, gray and black. Determined to represent the spontaneity and effortlessness to depict modern life. They flatten the perspective too.
By the point of Van Gogh represented the same subject matter with totally different techniques in two period of time which were before and after he lived in Paris, it proved that coming in contact with many avant-garde artists in Paris was the main reason that altered Van Gogh’s style instead of moved the living place to Arles.
As Van Gogh was living in mainstream during 1886 - 1888, that made him to get the newest trends of art very easily. He wasn’t going to limit himself after lightening the palette and experimenting with the broken brushstrokes, he was also fascinated by the Japonisme and absorbed loads of visual elements from it.
In 1853, a tidal wave of foreign imports drowned Europe as Japanese ports reopened to trade with West. At the peak of the wave, woodblock printing by master of the Ukiyo-e school which changed Impressionist art by demonstrating the transitory and daily objects in delightful way. There were many artists who were influenced by Japonisme art included Van Gogh himself. Also he became an enthusiastic collector. Japonisme art acted as a catalyst which taught him to look at the world in the brand new way and made him decided to modernise his work. It really transformed his style a lot as a result.
Japanese artists usually left the middle ground of their composition empty, while subject matter in the foreground were sometimes amplified. They constantly excluded the horizon or suddenly cropped the elements of the picture at the edge. For example the Kabuki Actor Ōtani Oniji III(Fig.4) by Tōshūsai Sharaku, he depicted the subject matter in elongated pictorial format, flat perspective, large area of empty space with simple colour, linearly represented the outline of human face, body and cloth, also singularly focused on one motif.
It was such a whole new style of art for Western artists, they realised that they didn’t have to arrange their work in conventional way all the time. To learn those techniques, Van Gogh reproduced many of Japanese prints. You can see his improvement by comparing two artworks from him in different period of time - The first one is Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin (Fig.5) which was produced in Paris, second one is L ’Arlesienne: Madame Ginoux with Books (Fig.6) which was produced in Arles.
It’s full of Impressionist’s style on the first portrait still, such as rapid brushstroke and unbalance composition. He depicted the perspective by the directional line on the wall, enlarged the size of woman, table, chairs and glasses in the foreground and used brown, green and purple as a shadow, turquoise, white and apricot as a highlight. Also he did not care about the similar texture of everything in the picture.
There is a huge change in the second portrait obviously. Apart from the short brushstroke which was the same as before, Van Gogh adopted those Japanese visual creation in his work. He portrayed the subject matter in a linear way as there is a bold outline of the chair, he flatten the perspective more by simply arranged the table behind the books, woman behind the table and chair before the woman. Also there is a large empty space with vivid yellow colour as the background and round shape with deep green colour as a table, only number of unmixed colours in used in this portrait.
Japonisme art, like Impressionism, was such a great inspiration for Van Gogh. Japonisme art even became his base for development in his latter year. He loved the unusual spatial effects, the expanses of high vibrational colour, the attention to details from the daily objects and nature, also the foreign and cheerful atmosphere. He showed his adoration apparently in his latter works like Café Terrace at Night (Fig.7). The lively yellow colour made the cafe looks like opening at day time, even he depicted the environment at the night time with few kinds of blue colours as the sky and buildings, and the white dots as the stars. He definitively formed the scene with line and barely portrayed the depth in about centre of the picture with darker colours. Van Gogh had entirely absorbed the skill of Japonisme art and merge it with his own Impressionism manner by still using the rapid brushstroke and unmix colours. Critic categorized him as a ‘Post - Impressionist’ after he died.
I am not going to say that Arles didn’t make Van Gogh better. It actually did. But he would not be able to create those masterpieces without undergoing a major transformation during his two years stay in Paris. Van Gogh used to write to his brother Theo from Arles said ‘After some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel colour differently. I’m also convinced that it’s precisely through a long stay here that I’ll bring out my personality.’ It revealed that how much Japonisme art had affected him. Beside, the long stay in Arles on his own with nature finally did bring out his very unique personality in his works, but still it wasn’t Arles that solely made Van Gogh a legend.
Reference
Cheung So Man, 360 Van Gogh (Taipei, Uni-Books, 2009), 48
Barbara Stok, Vincent (London, SelfMadeHero, 2014), 56-64
Colta Ives, and Susan Alyson Stein, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890): The Drawings, October 2005, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh_d/hd_gogh_d.htm
Colta Ives, Japonisme, October 2004, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jpon/hd_jpon.htm
Van Gogh Museum, Inspiration from Japan, https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-japan#10
Van Gogh Museum, Inspiration from Japan, https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-japan#18