Samaritan (May)

'The Good Samaritan (After Delacroix)', 1890

Visiting Van Gogh, the nobody. In most people’s eyes he’s a nonentity, an eccentric, a disagreeable man. He imitates Delacroix and other somebodies, their take on nobodies like the Samaritan hoisting the half-dead man onto his animal. Ignored, that half-dead victim. More than one somebody went past that nobody: too much trouble, the wrong day, it’s against my principles. The weight of him, the cry of him, but the Samaritan was well able. He’s dressed like a somebody, which is something, when you’re nobody. Copied in the madhouse respite, St. Rémy May 1890, where disagreeable finds himself, all beaten up.

Sunrise (May)

'Sunrise', 1883

Visiting Van Gogh. Because before sunrise men are going to work rugged up against the cold. Because the effort is made again despite everything they know and dream. Because walls, like a new work, take clean shape with first light. Because sky is becoming the grey immensity of dissolving stars. Because work calls them out of their own darkness. Because white as paper, pale orange, May horizon lifts the Earth’s awareness. “Because one must make efforts like those of the lost souls. Because there is something diabolical about executing a water-colour. Because there is something good in every energetic motion.”

Source of quote: http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/170.htm?qp=food

Bible (May)

'Still-life with open Bible, Candelestick and Novel', Nuenen, October 1887 

 Visiting Van Gogh, arriving before one of his icons, an opened Bible. In darkness light shines from its pages. Opened where a Bible usually opens halfway: Isaiah. One of his favourite Books, and why not? “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.” An icon’s holy if it depicts holy persons, but he refused to depict biblical persons, seeing them all in living humans. An icon may be holy if it depicts holy things. The candle’s out. This Dutch Protestant Rembrandt-like preaches how “the light shines in darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it.” Zola’s ‘La Joie de Vivre’, a midrash.

Self-portrait (May)

'Self-portrait', 1887

Visiting Van Gogh. It’s quick impasto: this is the shape loneliness takes in the morning. It’s creases of white re-lined: this is the dread of time hurting, laughing, walking away, ending. It’s industrial strength colours wriggling from tubes: this is the proof no-one’s paying for a face like that. It’s the fleck and turn: his eyes checking every inch of light and darkness, those are brushstrokes that were his eyes, outstaring us all. It’s stroke stroke: the torrent of effect a garden hedge in May. It’s everything a photograph cannot do: this is a face free of every cameraman alive.

Window (May)

'Window in the Bataille Restaurant', 1887

Visiting Van Gogh, of no fixed address. We know which side of the glass he’s on. Not our side. The cream have invitations to the gallery opening. He’s outside in the cold. He will know not the right thing to say, or when to stop. Windows reflect a hunger, then he’s gone. He’s on the other side of the dealer’s spectacles. Something of his will be always beyond auction rooms and platitudes. May is not a lie. Big sponsors don’t want God, the language they speak is crowd numbers. Springtime is sunshine slight relief that draws him from his bolthole.

Church (May)

'The Church at Auvers', 1890.

Visiting Van Gogh. Social media is the opium of the people. Hollywood Top 100 is the opium, ‘Lust For Life’ facsimiles screen to rooms of the well-fed, “Starry, starry night” serenades radio of permanent recycle. I blew it as a pastor, I went far beyond respectable. No one has to lift a prostitute out of destitute, no one must preach till they’re blue in the face. Reject priests can be more evangelical than new converts. We are realists of the spirit. Opiates are useless and May is a miracle. Today, Theo, I will colour-warm a church from the outside in.

Iris (May)

'Irises', May 1889 

 

Visiting Van Gogh this May. Evaluating the interpretation of his irises, colour of night cafés, the natural tangle of asylum gardens. Instancing his every identification with poverty, people without a centime to their names, landscapes no billionaire can separate with a wall. Qualifying those immediate perceptions with, ‘In 1987 ‘Irises’ became the most expensive painting ever sold. Then it was sold for US$53.9 million to Alan Bond, but he did not have enough money to pay for ‘Irises’. It is currently tenth on the inflation-adjusted list of most expensive paintings ever sold, 25^th if the effects of inflation are ignored.’

Windmill (May)

                                            Windmills at Montmartre, 1886

Visiting Van Gogh, and introducing Post-Colonial Van Gogh, running from the Dutch Empire that sinks into Batavian cinnamon sunset. Scene Two: Patriarchal Van Gogh has 63% male 37% female friends, so is clearly not a feminist. Gay Van Gogh? Cultural Appropriation Van Gogh seeps from every crevice of his Hiroshige rip-offs. Post-impressionist Van Gogh (they were talking about him at interval) is safe territory, only is he? Or may that be appropriation too? Inappropriate and obviously not Gauguin. Finale (singing): “My theory’s better than your theory, or Vincent Van Gogh’s!” This morning’s review: Gauguin is better because I prefer Gauguin.