VVG is universally loved. I recommend the Dafoe movie very highly.
Vincent was much like The Elephant man. Kids in Arles would rap on his window, at the little yellow house, and mock him. They’d throw cabbages at his on the streets. If you saw him approaching on the sidewalk, you’d cross the street to avoid passing him. he stank of filth, and was generally rude or weird to anyone who wasn’t a direct friend. if you were his friend, he was intelligent, witty and bizarre.
This is why I don’t buy into the Dr Who episode. He was not good company. And, that’s sad.
Auntie AnalogueMarch 10, 2020, 8:37 PM
Pass the potatoes!
tcMarch 10, 2020, 9:46 PM
We saw the Van Gogh exhibit at the London Tate last summer.
I could’ve spent all day there. Shame I didn’t.
rabbit tobaccoMarch 10, 2020, 9:51 PM
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears….
MMinLamesaMarch 11, 2020, 12:31 AM
His paintings are beautiful, I had the pleasure of standing in front of one once in Denver. Gorgeous texture.
However, being a life long glass artist(68) in my book the American artist, Louis Comfort Tiffany is responsible for the most goose bump producing art I’ve ever had the luxury to see. Did he personally craft 1,000s of leaded windows, shades and other priceless works of art? Of course not but he was at the Studio and Corona every day making sure the work produced was what he envisioned.
There was also this fellow in Italy who commanded several mediums, one of which was sculpture. I had the unforgettable experience at the age of 13 to ride a moving sidewalk in a dark room in front of the only illuminated object in that room. It was the Pieta and it blew my young mind.
I think calling any man “the greatest artist who ever lived” just ain’t right.
Nunnya Bidnez, jrMarch 11, 2020, 6:16 AM
I walk past Louis Comfort Tiffany’s gravesite frequently;
it is surprisingly plain and unadorned, and not in a prominent location.
One of the earliest battles of the American Revolution was fought on these grounds, nearly sixty-five years before the cemetery opened….
the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776.
BillHMarch 11, 2020, 7:44 AM
The first wall hanging we newlyweds hung in our furnished apartment in ’55 was a Sunflowers print, just like ‘leventy million other newlyweds did back then. Seemed like every neighbor and friend we visited had either that one or the blue one, Irises I think it was, hung on their LR wall. Lust for Life came out about that time and we dutifully plunked down our 50¢ each and watched it. Van Gogh was big in our mid-50s world.
CrisMarch 11, 2020, 10:54 AM
I highly recommend the movie ‘Loving Vincent’ – 95 minutes of oil-painted animation. Truly beautiful.
I quite agree Casey Klahn, but I gotta throw in a yea but;
Vincent may have been, OK, was, rude crude, strange and stank to high heaven but that Dr. Who scene comes very close to art surpassing life and TV being art. The staging, timing, camera angles and dialog, etc., were quite superb.
Also it allows me the conceit that just maybe one of my paintings that I’ve traded for beer in a bar might, someday, actually move someone! -grin-
I think that was the sweetest episode of the Doctor.
When you walk into the modern/impressionist section of the Getty in L.A., his Irises pops out and grabs your eye before anything else in the room.
Casey KlahnMarch 11, 2020, 2:03 PM
Hi, James ONeil. Very happy for the discussion. My teenage daughter is a big VVG fan, and her defense is that the DW scene imagines him being honored by his exhibition, and so why not extend the fantasy? For my part, I just want those interested to know the extent of his mental plight and, anyway, I never do well with “crazy person as hero” movies because…fucking crazy people are essentially doing time in hell. It ain’t glamorous (my mother was one such person).
BTW, M. van Gogh is my number three fave artist of all time. I encourage any and all media about him. I had to put down the Smith Naifeh biography of him. Too gay. The oil painting movie I liked but didn’t love. The movies that did well were Lust for Life and At Eternity’s Gate.
A fantastic book is 9 Weeks in Arles. How many steps there were between the adjacent cafe and the yellow house (of his bedroom fame). Hpw close was the whore house where he delivered his ear? What did he eat for breakfast? All of this, but not a dull moment ever. Martin Gayford.
Quite agree Casey, your fave artists choice. I often play with the 3 most underappreciated 20th century artists, who, decades later, will be considered game changers. I’ll mention Rockwell, Dali and Bob Ross as such & it always leads to interesting discussions, & no, I never defend my choices, just let the conversation revolve around them.
Crazy folks; no, not as heroes but as just folks tryin’ to get through the day, like the rest of us. Give then a hand when you can, move back at arm’s length when necessary and never ever throw cabbages at them.
I’m curious, Casey. You said you put down the Smith/Naifeh biography because it was too “gay’? I’ve got the book nearby on a shelf. Have been meaning to get to it for a few years, and I will. The authors are gay… or were. One of them died. I can’t recall whom. What turned you off about the book? I visit goodreads to get a gist of public reaction before I crack a tome, but you being a painter I’d like to know what you thought about the book… and your perception of Vincent that didn’t jive with what you were reading.
I thought this article from a few years back was pretty cool. A search was launched to find the most Vincent-looking man alive. This effort resulted with Daniel Baker of Christchurch, England stepping forward. https://iamvincent.com
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
![The Olympic Peninsula at the Vernal Equinox [2014]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/a_olympicpen.jpg "The Olympic Peninsula at the Vernal Equinox [2014]")
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
VVG is universally loved. I recommend the Dafoe movie very highly.
Vincent was much like The Elephant man. Kids in Arles would rap on his window, at the little yellow house, and mock him. They’d throw cabbages at his on the streets. If you saw him approaching on the sidewalk, you’d cross the street to avoid passing him. he stank of filth, and was generally rude or weird to anyone who wasn’t a direct friend. if you were his friend, he was intelligent, witty and bizarre.
This is why I don’t buy into the Dr Who episode. He was not good company. And, that’s sad.
Pass the potatoes!
We saw the Van Gogh exhibit at the London Tate last summer.
I could’ve spent all day there. Shame I didn’t.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears….
His paintings are beautiful, I had the pleasure of standing in front of one once in Denver. Gorgeous texture.
However, being a life long glass artist(68) in my book the American artist, Louis Comfort Tiffany is responsible for the most goose bump producing art I’ve ever had the luxury to see. Did he personally craft 1,000s of leaded windows, shades and other priceless works of art? Of course not but he was at the Studio and Corona every day making sure the work produced was what he envisioned.
There was also this fellow in Italy who commanded several mediums, one of which was sculpture. I had the unforgettable experience at the age of 13 to ride a moving sidewalk in a dark room in front of the only illuminated object in that room. It was the Pieta and it blew my young mind.
I think calling any man “the greatest artist who ever lived” just ain’t right.
I walk past Louis Comfort Tiffany’s gravesite frequently;
it is surprisingly plain and unadorned, and not in a prominent location.
https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2018/311/2957_fc2d6778-f76f-4019-ab06-1fa1a5714adc.jpeg
He designed many other grave markers in the same cemetery which are what you would have expected his own to look like.
https://www.green-wood.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/tiffany.chapman.alfred.jpg
One of the earliest battles of the American Revolution was fought on these grounds, nearly sixty-five years before the cemetery opened….
the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776.
The first wall hanging we newlyweds hung in our furnished apartment in ’55 was a Sunflowers print, just like ‘leventy million other newlyweds did back then. Seemed like every neighbor and friend we visited had either that one or the blue one, Irises I think it was, hung on their LR wall. Lust for Life came out about that time and we dutifully plunked down our 50¢ each and watched it. Van Gogh was big in our mid-50s world.
I highly recommend the movie ‘Loving Vincent’ – 95 minutes of oil-painted animation. Truly beautiful.
That was well done!
I quite agree Casey Klahn, but I gotta throw in a yea but;
Vincent may have been, OK, was, rude crude, strange and stank to high heaven but that Dr. Who scene comes very close to art surpassing life and TV being art. The staging, timing, camera angles and dialog, etc., were quite superb.
Also it allows me the conceit that just maybe one of my paintings that I’ve traded for beer in a bar might, someday, actually move someone! -grin-
I think that was the sweetest episode of the Doctor.
When you walk into the modern/impressionist section of the Getty in L.A., his Irises pops out and grabs your eye before anything else in the room.
Hi, James ONeil. Very happy for the discussion. My teenage daughter is a big VVG fan, and her defense is that the DW scene imagines him being honored by his exhibition, and so why not extend the fantasy? For my part, I just want those interested to know the extent of his mental plight and, anyway, I never do well with “crazy person as hero” movies because…fucking crazy people are essentially doing time in hell. It ain’t glamorous (my mother was one such person).
BTW, M. van Gogh is my number three fave artist of all time. I encourage any and all media about him. I had to put down the Smith Naifeh biography of him. Too gay. The oil painting movie I liked but didn’t love. The movies that did well were Lust for Life and At Eternity’s Gate.
A fantastic book is 9 Weeks in Arles. How many steps there were between the adjacent cafe and the yellow house (of his bedroom fame). Hpw close was the whore house where he delivered his ear? What did he eat for breakfast? All of this, but not a dull moment ever. Martin Gayford.
Quite agree Casey, your fave artists choice. I often play with the 3 most underappreciated 20th century artists, who, decades later, will be considered game changers. I’ll mention Rockwell, Dali and Bob Ross as such & it always leads to interesting discussions, & no, I never defend my choices, just let the conversation revolve around them.
Crazy folks; no, not as heroes but as just folks tryin’ to get through the day, like the rest of us. Give then a hand when you can, move back at arm’s length when necessary and never ever throw cabbages at them.
I’m curious, Casey. You said you put down the Smith/Naifeh biography because it was too “gay’? I’ve got the book nearby on a shelf. Have been meaning to get to it for a few years, and I will. The authors are gay… or were. One of them died. I can’t recall whom. What turned you off about the book? I visit goodreads to get a gist of public reaction before I crack a tome, but you being a painter I’d like to know what you thought about the book… and your perception of Vincent that didn’t jive with what you were reading.
I thought this article from a few years back was pretty cool. A search was launched to find the most Vincent-looking man alive. This effort resulted with Daniel Baker of Christchurch, England stepping forward. https://iamvincent.com