Vincent’s self-portraits have established him as one of the most famous faces in history. Self Portrait, 1887, oil on cardboard.
Most people whom I know have a favorite artist. And there are dozens of artists that I adore, even crave. I love Eduard Manet for his strong color and composition; I love John Singer Sargent for his scale and painterly brushwork; but above all, I love Vincent van Gogh for his ebullient colors, skewed perspectives, and life story. So imagine my excitement when I heard that an assemblage of 50 paintings by van Gogh would be exhibited in Houston–and only in Houston. This TroysArt post is not only about Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston but also everything you need to know about Vincent van Gogh but were afraid to ask.
A few years back, on a significant birthday, I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—as did about 1,000 other people that sunny January morning. Dead since 1890, Vincent was packing them in more than ever. I saw the museum with my friend Michael (aka Manderson in some blog posts) so I wondered who better to see this Houston exhibit with. But Michael now lives in San Francisco and works in Shreveport (wrap your head around that commute), so the logistics of getting together seemed problematic.
Nonetheless, one sunny day in April, Michael and I teamed up to tour the exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
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Vincent van Gogh, Garden of the Asylum at Saint-Remy, 1889. His viewpoint is deliberate and the exuberantly flowering bushes and trees, depicted as a tangle of thick brushstrokes, explode like fireworks from the canvas.
Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) is considered a Post-Impressionist painter or Fauvist though he is usually and broadly lumped in with Impressionists. He was born into an affluent and extremely religious Dutch family. He studied art in Paris and created about 2,100 works of art, including about 860 oil paintings, in a highly prolific ten-year period.
Vincent was known to be anti-social and he suffered from psychotic episodes, delusions, and alcoholism. A famous manifestation of this behavioral issues occurred in Arles in December, 1888, when, during a drunken argument with Paul Gaugin, he cut off his ear and gave it to the waitress at their local bar. The episode effectively ended his friendship with Gaugin and caused his committal to a psychiatric hospital.
Van Gogh died from a gunshot wound to the stomach in 1890.
Upon his death, his huge body of work fell into the possession of his brother Theo van Gogh; but Theo died a few months later, leaving the art to his widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Johanna had the ambition and wherewithal to create interest in the late artist’s work and ignited a world-wide fervor for his unusual style. She found collectors and made Vincent collectible.
Unsold works were inherited by her son who put them on public display, loaned to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, forming the basis of the Van Gogh Museum. The Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973 in buildings designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa and is the largest collection of the Dutch painter’s artwork.
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As Vincent was a well-documented alcoholic, I figured what a better way for Michael and me to view the paintings than to start with a few drinks and a light lunch at Brasserie 19. It also happened to be April 20th, so figure that one out.
And it was no surprise that, even in Texas, Vincent had people waiting in line.
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Vincent van Gogh, Trees with Undergrowth, 1887, oil on canvas, employs a Pointillism technique allowing thousands of leaves to dance in the breeze before us.
Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art at the MFAH showcases portraits, landscapes, and still lifes from the collections of the Van Gogh Museum and the Kroller-Muller Museum.
I have also been to the Kroller-Muller Museum—Michael’s idea.
The Kroller-Muller is located near Otterlo in the middle of Holland in a National Park created in the last Ice Age with alternating woodlands, prairie, and sand dunes. Crazy rich Helene Kroller-Muller was one of the first major collectors to recognize Vincent’s genius. In 1935 she donated her collection to the country, establishing a museum in her name. This is considered the largest assemblage of Vincent van Gogh paintings aside from the Van Gogh Museum. The accumulation of 19th and early 20th Century art, surrounded by sculpture gardens, is housed in a 1938 building by Henry van de Velde. Houston philanthropist Dominique de Menil must have drawn great inspiration from this museum complex for her own museum. The building is sleek and incorporates natural light and courtyards throughout in which to showcase the paintings. Some critics have speculated that the quality of the collection surpasses even the Van Gogh Museum.
Incidentally, my experience at the Kroller-Muller was used as inspiration for part of a chapter in my novel Drank Myself Straight. So now this important commercial message…
(With a 5 out of 5 Stars Rating on Amazon.com, martini glasses clink in Drank Myself Straight by Troy Broussard, as Brad Benoit, a gay man in a straight man’s world, clumsily navigates the blurred lines of sex and dignity.)
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Laymen have been known to call Vincent’s style childlike or simplistic. Even ambitious imitators might consider his work easily duplicated. Well, it is neither! And I do encourage artistic endeavors, whether trying to actually copy a van Gogh or by evoking a work in his style. Give it a whirl. And keep me posted on that.
Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1890, oil on canvas, is one of his most recognizable pieces.
A few of the pieces in the exhibit really stood out.
Vincent believed that a true painting required optimal use of color, perspective and brushwork. One of my favorite paintings in the exhibit is Garden of the Asylum at Saint-Remy, 1889, from the Kroller-Muller collection. His viewpoint is deliberate and the exuberantly flowering bushes and trees, depicted as a tangle of thick brushstrokes, explode like fireworks from the canvas. This painting scored as my favorite but it was also Michael’s number one!
Marsh with Lilies, 1881, ink on paper, from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, represents one of many drawings included in the exhibit—and one of my favorites. One of Michael’s favorites, he pointed it out and mentioned that it reminded him of something out of my sketch pad. Wow.
Vincent’s self-portraits have established him as one of the most famous faces in history. Self Portrait, 1887, oil on cardboard, from the Van Gogh Museum, demonstrates the artist’s effort to imitate Pointillism, a new technique showcased at the Impressionist exhibit the year before. Though colors would have been brighter and more pronounced 132 years ago, his intention was not to realistically portray himself. However, his eyes are powerfully rendered and engage the viewer.
Another favorite for both Michael and myself is Trees with Undergrowth, 1887, oil on canvas, from the Van Gogh Museum, which is almost entirely green. But the artist also employs a Pointillism technique in highlighting light and shadow, allowing thousands of leaves to dance in the breeze before us. So if I had a number two…
Up close, the brushstrokes look compartmentalized like stained glass.
Irises, 1890, oil on canvas, from the Van Gogh Museum, is one of his most recognizable pieces. This painting was designed to highlight color and contrast. Purple is complimentary to yellow and records show that originally the blue flowers would have been purple before the toll of time (red pigments used with blue to make purple were notoriously unstable then). Up close, the brushstrokes look compartmentalized like stained glass.
Vase with Gladiolas and Chinese Asters, 1886, oil on canvas, from the Van Gogh Museum, is a painterly still life. Vincent hoped that this type of painting might sell well, given the tastes for paintings of this style. It is particularly striking also for the use of complimentary colors placed in side-by-side contrast. And it looks, to me, more related to other Impressionist painters of the era.
With so many amazing paintings and drawings, it sounds weird to pick a handful as favorites–but it is only human nature to boil things down.
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has put together a beautiful exhibition book which can be purchased here:
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Loving Vincent, which debuted in 2017, was an experimental movie about van Gogh made from 65,000 original oil paintings, each frame an original work of art, which made mainstream questions doubting the circumstances the artist’s death—a death that was ruled a suicide. I saw the film alone on the big screen at the historic River Oaks Cinema and absolutely loved it!
I had read the theory surrounding his questionable suicide years ago and found it plausible. The 2011 book Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith conjectures that van Gogh did not kill himself.
Vincent van Gogh, Marsh with Lilies, 1881, ink on paper, represents one of many drawings included in the exhibit.
The movie and the book puts forth the controversial and believable theory that questions why an ambitious young artist in the prime of his life’s work would kill himself. Just days before the shooting, van Gogh placed a large order for art supplies and on the very morning of the shooting he wrote an upbeat letter to his brother Theo. Rene Secretan, a 16-year-old known to bully Vincent in Auvers, is speculated to have accidentally shot the artist; and it is believed that van Gogh covered for him. Following Vicente Minnelli’s biopic Lust for Life, which depicted the artist committing suicide, Secretan broke a lifetime of silence in 1956 admitting to not only bullying Vincent but to also giving him the gun, falling just short of acknowledging man slaughter. Further, for a man who wrote daily, no suicide note was ever found.
In Julian Schnabel’s 2018 biopic about Vincent, At Eternity’s Gate, he also supported the theory that Van Gogh was killed, possibly by accident, by Rene Secretan. And, on the topic of this movie, while I loved the recreation of the masterpieces on film, the camera work will make a person physically ill. I personally had to stop the movie and go lay down. Schnabel might get millions for a painting, he is surely one of the greatest living American artists, but he should stick to his broken plates.
Vincent van Gogh, Vase with Gladiolas and Chinese Asters, 1886, oil on canvas, is particularly striking for the use of complimentary colors placed in side-by-side contrast.
Schnabel’s success cannot uniquely draw him to van Gogh. Almost every sycophantic wannabe artist thinks they have a unique understanding of Vincent—if nothing else, simply for the reason that their time will surely come, as Vincent was wholly unappreciated during his lifetime. He was never a famous painter and he struggled constantly with poverty, only selling one piece of art, The Red Vineyard for 400 francs seven months before he died.
Whether suicide or man slaughter, the rusted Lefaucheux revolver, fished out of an Auvers pond in 1965, will be auctioned to the highest bidder in Paris this June. Of interest to art collectors and gun enthusiasts, and possibly the most famous gun in art history, it is expected to fetch at about $65,000.
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Visiting the museum in Houston is always impressive. But when a major player like van Gogh is the draw, things get crazy. And why not? More Americans need to flock here for this event.
An important tip for your visit to MFAH—purchase priority admission!
Vincent suffered from a series of complex syndromes and psychiatric dysfunctions. And I cannot help but wonder what the artist would have thought, if he would have been claustrophobic at his own celebration. It is an interesting thought but I doubt it. He would certainly have loved Houston.
YouTube – Loving Vincent official trailer
YouTube – At Eternity’s Gate trailer