During my visit to Amsterdam, I made the obligatory trip to the Van Gogh museum. The museum itself was really well done, but the sheer number of people made for an interesting experience with the art. Between those with the audio tour always seeming to stand in the wrong place and tour groups for children making me feel like I was always standing in the wrong place, it was honestly difficult to really appreciate or experience the artwork. So much of the exhibit narrative was about Van Gogh's ability to inhabit and communicate such strong emotions and intense feelings, but surrounded by people snapping photos and chatting, it was hard to tap into the emotional level. Don't get me wrong, I am so glad that so many people are excited about art and that his work is on display in this way. I was also there snapping photos. But I did notice that instead of strong reactions to specific paintings, I found myself musing on Van Gogh's artistic practice and life and philosophy on art. So, in no particular order and with very little critical weight behind them, here are some thoughts I had while visiting the Van Gogh museum:
1. Let's de-stigmatize moving back home/moving in with family members.
Though I think things are changing, there is still this prevalent (heteronormative, largely Western) notion that at some point in early adulthood you move out of your parents house, go to college, get a job, get married and only return as a visitor never to stay. Reading the timeline of Van Gogh's life I was struck by how many times he left home and then came back. Living with family members gave him the freedom to pursue his painting. The leaving and returning were of equal importance it seems. Leaving allowed him to expand his horizons, learn more about other artwork, meet and be inspired by other artists. Coming home allowed him to root his work in the peasant life and natural world that he grew up in and respected as worthy to be painted. As I face the end of my temporary position in Germany with still no next step lined up, I feel that stigma against "moving back home." Why do I view it as a failure instead of a creative refuge? What a privilege to not only have a home and family to return to, but ones that I enjoy being with and who support me! Of course the economic weight of all of this is hard to ignore. Van Gogh was constantly struggling to make ends meet and stay committed to his art. The idea that you would never live at home or with family again after eighteen is becoming more and more ridiculous given the high cost of living and housing crisis across the US. A friend recently offered her spare bedroom if I needed a place to land for a bit and something about the offer just brought me so much relief. The idea of moving towards other people, even if it means relying on them a bit, rather than striking out on my own, to yet another new, unfamiliar place felt like a welcome reprieve. What a concept!
2. Artistic practice is a lot of work.
The first room of the museum showcased the many self-portraits that Van Gogh painted. The exhibit explained that Van Gogh used self-portraits as a way to practice his techniques and try out new colors and strokes etc. He couldn't afford to pay for models so he just painted himself. He also did a ton of drafting and sketches as ways to try out ideas before painting them. Such an obvious idea, but I really felt the lack of practice in my approach to creative writing. In terms of critical writing, this was built into my training in graduate school: daily writing, weekly responses, annotated bibliographies, and reverse outlines. But as I've started to find my way back to creative writing again, I've not translated that approach between genres. In part, I think the motivation behind this blog is to get back to just writing and practicing writing. But looking at all of Van Gogh's self-portraits, I kind of wanted my own creative writing practice challenge. Instead of always working on a precious project, why not a series of prompts that force me to try out different writing styles and just play with writing to improve my technique. Maybe this is something that will make an appearance soon...
3. Why does art, but especially writing, carry the burden of originality?
To be honest, part of Van Gogh's process was kind of plagiarism. Well, in the exhibits they called it paying homage, of course. He studied the work of other artists and attempted to recreate prints that he saw, even straight up copied other artists with his own flair. He was really interested in Japanese prints which were kind of in vogue at the time, which also brings up a lot of questions about how we talk about appropriation today. The temporary exhibit was also on Mathew Wong whose work is very directly inspired by Van Gogh to the point where he even recreates some of Van Gogh's most famous paintings. My first very generalized reaction to all of this was outrage at the double standard in forms of art. Here this kind of borrowing and reproducing is praised, but in creative writing it feels like there is such an insurmountable expectation for originality and newness. I feel like people are often looking at narratives (fiction and film) and calling them out for "stealing" a concept or plot idea etc. Or if you are responding directly to someone else's work in your writing, you better be ready to get ripped apart for being derivative or a second-rate copy of the original. I think genre fiction has perhaps most helpfully pushed back on this by claiming their use of tropes and the importance of playing with those tropes. Of course, I don't think this burden is actually unique to writing; all art gets scrutinized in this way so perhaps it was surprising and refreshing to see the museum celebrating the kind of inspiration and collaboration that artists get from working with each other and borrowing. Lately, I've been feeling so intimidated by books that I've been reading, particularly because I've been on a weird fiction kick lately. My work just never seems as interesting and well done as what I've been reading. But instead of being insecure about that, what would it mean to be inspired. Why not attempt their techniques or styles--that's certainly how Van Gogh taught himself to be a painter. Again obvious kinds of reflections here, but duh he didn't just sit down and paint the sunflowers. He had to try out pointillism and practice a bunch of different strokes and colors before he got to his own style and even then it was built from everything that inspired him.
4. Finding, creating, and sustaining artistic community feels impossible sometimes.
I love a group of self-proclaimed artists. The Bloomsbury Group. Gertrude Stein's salons. Black Mountain College. I am currently in the process of writing a book review of a new academic book about New York women of wit in the interwar period and what I love about it so far is the way the women are all rooted in a different self-proclaimed group of writers or intellectuals so in each chapter you get a glimmer of a different little creative community. It's definitely an over-romanticization, but there's just something so magical and mystical about these groups of young people unabashedly practicing art and being inspired together. I think Van Gogh felt the same way. At least according to the museum, Gaugin had managed to temporarily pull this off with the Pont-Aven school and Van Gogh wanted something similar, hence the yellow house and inviting Gaugin to stay. And of course we know how that all ended up. But on some level, I really sympathize with Van Gogh's desire for community and inability to fully realize it. I think it's so hard--which is why so many of those in these famous circles end up writing satires about their experiences (Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance comes to mind--the best gossip novel of the 19th century in my opinion). It makes me wish I was a tad bit messier since it seems like to make these magical moments work, you have to embrace the messiness and consider the pain and heartache worthy taxes for artistic material and inspiration.
5. There's always a woman doing invisible labor.
After reading Kate Zambreno's Heroines, I think I was most excited to learn about Van Gogh's sister-in-law Jo Bonger and now want to read her biography. There was a lovely moment in the museum where they had available the audio recording of a letter Jo wrote to Vincent soon after she married his brother. What a compassionate person--perhaps Vincent was missing the community he had right around him because they weren't all famous artists. She writes that they think of him often and she wants to know him on her own and not just through the husband/brother and tells him about a flowering tree near her window, which of course he then painted and was on display next to the letter. I guess after his death (and his brother's two years later), she took the lead in preserving and promoting his artwork and is the reason that he is so famous and well-remembered today. She even collected his letters with his brother and translated them all into English herself. I can help but wonder, though, if she had her own artistic pursuits or inclinations. She clearly had an appreciation for Van Gogh's work and his mind to have spent a life painstakingly stewarding his legacy. But what about her legacy? What could it have been?
6. Why does Van Gogh feel queer to me?
Maybe I was just mixing up the soul crushing experience of watching All of Us Strangers the night before, but walking around the museum, I couldn't help but wonder if Van Gogh was queer. The museum didn't talk much about his love life, apart from mentioning that he wanted a family but was too focused on his art. The intense relationship with his brother. The appreciation of other forms of erotic. The very particular kind of loneliness. Some very light googling later, I gather that some scholars think he was probably bisexual and certainly had some sort of relationship with Gaugin. He also frequented sex workers and had a sustained relationship with a former sex worker. His story just felt like it had an asexual kinship--seeking and valuing other kinds of relationships than just romantic ones, a life on a queer time plane that's out of sync with everyone else, perhaps a different kind of erotic understanding of the world (I mean, the flowers, right?).
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