A pair of shoes

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
A Pair of Shoes, 1886
Oil on Canvas, 37.5 X 45 cm
Location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Image: http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/popup.jsp?page=1576&collection=1297&lang=en

Wow, so I knew something would be around to finally posting my potentially favorite painting of all time. I sat down to write this blog entry with no specific art work in mind. Looked around the room for inspiration and a book on Heidegger caught my eye. I pop "Heidegger and art" into Google and not surprisingly come up with as the first hit, a wikipedia entry on Heidegger's Origin of a Work of Art. I scroll down the page and there is Van Gogh's A Pair of Shoes. Yes, I studied art theory at the graduate level but somehow I seemed to have either skipped (which I surely shouldn't be admitting) reading Origin or somehow missed the focus on this painting. Alas, I shall be reading it soon but despite the hurrah and writing about this particular painting I am happy to say that I fell in love with it on my own, without pointers to its perceived importance or the interest it held for a variety of philosophers.

The wonder of the internets, as I link through more information I come across what could possibly be one of the best exhibitions ever "Vincent van Gogh: Shoes" currently at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne, Germany. Currently! How splendid is the wonder of timing and little coincidences! If only I could get myself to Cologne. A recent post in Harper's Magazine online discusses the exhibition, with extensive quotes about the shoes from Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro and Jacques Derrida.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90005828

All of this is well and good, but this is the kind of painting where I find no need for wordplay. Van Gogh painted a number of pictures of boots and shoes, all of which are rich and and alive and wrenching but this particular painting stands on its own. Oh how I want to go to Amsterdam! Both the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum have raised their awesomeness to me today!

Poppies and Daisies

Red Poppies and Daisies
Vincent van Gogh (links to a nice audiovisual bio and info)
oil on canvas
65.0 x 50.0 cm.
1890
private collection


As is usual, my Friday is a little wonky. Always have trouble getting things done, so I apologize for the lateness of the art today. Today is simple yet gorgeous (weather and art!) this is currently the image on my desktop. It took me awhile to find the details of this image (ie location, date, size). I eventually did at a website dedicated to van Gogh (supposedly endorsed by the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam), it has eons of digital images organized by the period of time and place in which they were created, very limited on subjects to search. Before this, Unfortunately I couldn't find the image anywhere that is not selling a print of it, which is pretty awful for all kinds of reasons including the insane commercialization of "pretty" pictures. It's as if an original never existed. It is fascinating to do an image search for something you've seen in person (and know the colors and hues etc.) and see the unending array of bad reproductions out there. To check out more flower paintings and more... (so prolific he was, creating 840 paintings and 1000 drawings in just 10 years) see here... There isn't a shortage of van Gogh paintings in public collections, I suggest the next time you come across one, spend some time with it. It took me some years to really begin to understand and appreciate his work, and the application of paint is simply marvelous and something I took on in my own work back in college - to no equivalent measure but I enjoy it just the same.

It's an interesting bit about digital images, many assume they are better (and they are getting better) but because of the quick and easy way of being able to create them, originally with art, not enough attention was paid to color detail. A reason why there are still many an art prof out there who wants to hold onto his slides because some of them (those that are well made and not excruciatingly old) actually provide a better surrogate image then some of those born digital. I digress... enjoy van Gogh's flowers as I always do and more van Gogh will be in your future (as one of my all time favorite paintings is a van Gogh, care to guess what it is?)