Peasant (June)

'Portrait of a Peasant', 1888

Visiting Van Gogh. The Revolution turned everyone into citizens with rights, turned everyone overnight away from being humans being enabled to learn divinity. Equality, fraternity. June became, briefly, Prairial and, briefly, Messidor. Broad brushstrokes, it’s true, all broad brushstrokes, but that’s the painter’s business, broad brushstrokes. What’s a full-blooded human to do with robots? Holding the microchip of future desire in their artificial digits? When we could be painting sunflowers all over the flat surfaces, handing them back empty-handed. Revolution, you say. Divinity, you say. Brushstrokes, you say. Desire, you say. Sunflowers, you say. Time to get back to work.

Sunflower (June)

'Sunflowers' (Detail)

Visiting Van Gogh, forgetting, if we ever remembered, sunflowers were peasant flowers. Came as a shock, these readymade clichés, to the system when first they appeared over the horizon in 1889. Their ragged glory, their outlandish pushiness, their triumphal hours. Provence in June, the light tightens the eyes. Yellow unforgettably takes over for weeks, remembering hot sirocco down to the roots. Their top-heavy heads drop over with age, hundreds of black tears blow across byways, ancient fields. Their definite intention, their definitive purpose, their indefinite cycle. Someone of no fixed address has just one chance to get it right, now.   

Cat (June)

 

'Hand with Bowl and Cat', Nuenen, 1885

Visiting Van Gogh. Or not. Stay at home. Inside. No inspiration. Just me, and the cat. Not trying to prove anything. Whatever. The cat, same contained position. Is it important? A world-shattering statement. Poetry, or anything, what’s it doing anyway? Universalising or particularising. The cat watches from her pillow.  It’s not an ego thing. It’s less and less an ego thing. The hand lifts a bowl of water, or milk. Water, milk. A room in June, where the art will do precisely nothing. Or something. Tap a tambourine. Say what? Make a speech. Pencil on paper. Ten minutes. Roly-poly cat!

Starry (June)

'Starry Night' (Detail), 1889

Visiting Van Gogh, breaking up in front of us. Breaking news, tonight an unknown artist self-admitted to an obscure clinic. Breaking up before the train goes into a tunnel, those last broken lines of com-mun-i-ca-tion. Breaking down the night into night’s energies: starry transmissions, tree languages, moon strokes. Breaking off relations yet again, the artist immerses ever more with the work, the point where the points break into lines. Breaking all records. Breaking plates. Breaking bread. Breaking through the defences before museums take hold and make it old. Breaking into the place where there’s no taxes, no Napoleon, no June.

Wheatfield (June)

 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jun/13/outside-of-the-land-looking-in-van-goghs-seasons-through-indigenous-eyes

                                                                      'Wheatfield', 1888

Visiting Van Gogh, Tyson Yunkaporta gets things right, like the rest of us. (Guardian, 13 June 2017) His nature writing matches Vincent’s, even down to connections between weather, crops, and wildlife. People will always have to work the land in order to live and survive. The Europeans have been agriculturalists for millennia. But Tyson gets things wrong, like the rest of us. The seasons of Europe predate the Industrial Revolution even if, like the seasons of eastern Australia, they’re now conditioned by industrialisation. Vincent made many images of sowing. The yam is a staple, which is why Vincent painted wheatfields.

Owl (June)

                                            'Barn Owl Viewed From The Side', 1887.

Visiting Van Gogh. Black hole of eye socket possesses flesh, light-eons that made sight possible. Moon of face owns the force of time, to attack or hold back. Clean as wind, scribble down warms the bird. Overlays of crossed feathers could be the wood they emulate. Pencil, pen and ink on paper, the owl is a statement beyond words. When claws lifted off black branch one June night its wonder went unseen by its prey. The hand that drew was already wounded and could self-wound, was never going to cease drawing the plan, until eye or face or hand failed.    

Blossom (June)

'Almond Blossom', 1890

Visiting Van Gogh, 9:02 and queues have formed already, June out for the day to see some old masterpieces, moving from frame to frame. For him, old masterpieces meant Rembrandt and Velásquez, how they achieved this minutiae, that entirety. His letters declare he is nothing, his life will have zero impact on anything. Today will be blossoms, cuttings from the orchard, or a vista of apricot orchard in the cold spring air. They push out of the wood, every petal with its own story. He will soon be forgotten, as we read in the gloss catalogue, selling in record numbers.

Hand (June)

'Three hands, two holding knives', circa 1884.

Visiting Van Gogh, seeing his hands active all the time, bold moves, supple tiers, fine detail. The prehistoric claws of hands limber up for their next exercise. The assertive grip of hands enshrines their everyday occurrence. The pinched precision of hands utilises muscles trained to express worldviews. Damaged hands, blunted by work, rest in the half-light. Free hands toss and splay for relaxation. Fisted hands hold unpronounced pain in their thinking partnership. Or else, in June, thumb through palette-hole, he lives out the routine only life provides. The hundred gestures of hands keep the game going. Slightly curled, they rest.