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The Genius of Van Gogh

post impressionism of van gogh

Impressionist Legacy

As we mentioned in article about impressionism, a piece of art that evokes more feeling in its viewers is very popular in modern times. After impressionists made revolution in art introducing a new way of seeing, many art movements evoked after and on of them was Van Gogh painting style that is generally called post-impressionism.

Though he never exhibited with them, Van Gogh was influenced by his friendship with Impressionists. After seeing their paintings in Paris, he began to use brighter colors and broken brushstrokes. However he differed from them in one important way. As he wrote in 1888, “Instead of trying to render what I see before me, I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully”.

Inner world on the canvas

Starry Night over the Rhone
Starry Night over the Rhone, Van Gogh

Van Gogh aimed at then the inner spirituality of man and nature led to a fusion of style and content that resulted in dramatic, imaginative, rhythmic, and emotional canvases that convey far more than the mere appearance of the subject. He used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic pure colors to express subjective emotions.

Van Gogh started to use simple pure colors that had not been seen before on the canvases. Before Impressionists and Van Gogh paintings were is muted, formal, structured, and often done in strict rules to convey political and social ideas. Van Gogh was simply expressing himself, his feelings on the canvas. He was very direct, using expressive brushstrokes he was just painting, his style went far beyond conventions like perspective and so on.

Live art

Van Gogh Cafe Table
Cafe Table with Absinthe, Van Gogh

Also Van Gogh tricks the views you into thinking he or she is seeing a painting of a flower, when in reality there are simple abstract brush strokes. Let’s take his Irises painting – these painting generates inside of people the impression of seeing a field of Irises while not actually using all the forms and colors of an actual purple Irises. So his job was to make people feel like they see Irises in life, to make them have that sensation.

When you walk into a room full of paintings and one of them is a Van Gogh you can tell it apart by the way it seems to hover 3 feet in front of the wall and makes the rest of the room seem almost black and white. It is a special magic about them, and everything seems moving in his paintings.

So choosing prints of Van Gogh’s works is considered a very good taste and so it is one of the best options to decorate your walls with one or two of his masterpieces.

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World famous art is still in fashion

famous art

Looking through different articles about home design in internet and printed magazines one can notice that almost everywhere examples of the wall decoration were only abstract paintings or just photos.

Albert Bierstadt Among the Sierra Nevada
Among the Sierra Nevada by Albert Bierstadt

Does decorating your home with framed prints of The Mona Lisa, Water Lilies of Monet, The Starry Night of Van Gogh, and so forth seem to be out of fashion or is it a sign of good taste?

In fact, the majority of people in the world use reproductions to decorate their homes. Using museum pieces is not tacky, why would anyone think it is silly to hang art prints on your walls, when the originals are viewed in museums by millions of people every year?

Having an appreciation for great art is admirable, and using it to decorate your home – well, how wonderful it would be to come home every day to some of the greatest works of art in the world.

To sum extend it is no different than listening to a recording of a famous musician instead of listening to them perform live. Sure, it’s not the original, but who can afford buying an original?

On the other hand purchasing prints of well know works like Mona Lisa, The Starry Night, Scream make sort of a bland statement about your aesthetic. “The art that speaks most to me is the top ten most widely-seen works in the world.” “I like things that the rest of the world has told me are good.”

By concentrating only on the well-known works, it makes others think the only reason those pictures are there is not because the person is fond of them, but because the person is trying to look as if being knowledgeable, which is especially ironic when you include the most famous, popular paintings that even the most uninterested in art can recognize. It looks like an attempt to appear educated, instead of a display of taste.

Argenteuil panitng
Railway Bridge At Argenteuil, Claude Monet

So the right way to do is choosing world famous artist but also less known of his work, besides the popular ones. You can hung on your wall Monet’s “The Railway Bridge At Argenteuil” and then someone ask who is the artist and you say it is Monet who painted Water Lilies and then you can show your good taste and your intelligence and real interest in art. By the way this painting was last sold for 41 million USD.

To sum up, decorating walls with prints of famous artists paintings is a nice way to add some comfort, coziness and aesthetic atmosphere in your home.