The causes of popularity

About Vincent van Gogh: We are told over and over again how wonderful something is, or how horrible, until we begin to believe it. This can be about an artist, an artistic movement, a food, an ethnic group, a religion. Then sometimes, some of us see that things just might not be what we’ve been told to believe. We learn to see with, and trust, our own eyes and hearts. Vincent might not make it in Muggsville, but he did see the world with his very own eyes and heart.

Vincent Van Gogh painted from the heart and his feeling is there for all to see, I believe, even those who know nothing about art. That is one reason why he is so popular. Other artists have had the marketing, the story and so forth, but none have had the lasting power. It is the emotion in the painting without going sugary. Vincent still lives in his paintings.

A voracious reader and scholar, Van Gogh was the consummate student and after years of very intense work and study, an accomplished professional artist. The reason his work is so popular (not Vincent himself, we shouldn’t confuse the two) is because it is so extraordinarily earnest and passionate, and just plain gorgeous. His work was not arrived at by accident or luck, or because of some inner fire inaccessible by mere mortals, it was arrived at because he loved art and painting, learned everything he possibly could about it, and worked as hard as he possibly could to make it. His work is a beacon for any serious painter because it is an example of the genius, power and magic (Goethe) of boldness and tenacity.

I came to Vincent’s painting through his letters. All the questions we ask of an artist he asked of himself. All the answers he struggled to formulate, the working-out of who and why and what he wanted are there. I would have liked to have talked to him.

This is an insult to Vincent van Gough, Saskatchewan, Muggsville and all members of the Muggs family.

It is hard to respond to the posed question of “popularity” because I tend to go deaf when I hear/read terms like “Joe six pack”, “average people” and “Muggsville”; terms often used by politicians who are uncomfortable in their leadership role and naked in their need to appear above others; who have trouble disguising the grandiosity that the use of those terms reveals. To me Vincent was never after illusion nor after illustrating popular delusions of grandeur or disaster. He was modest in his scope. WYSIWYG. His illness/genius did not allow him to go beyond the intersection of his paints and his reality. He didn’t stick around for the paint to dry.

Robert, you have sparked my heart with observations of Van Gogh; you are right on about it all. I’ve had the privilege to see his work in museums and know how he connects with the viewer on a personal note. His work is so powerful with brush strokes and sublime coloring and at the same time so touching with his choice of subjects it does tug at one’s heart strings. His personal life was somewhat of a tragedy adding to the intrique of his paintings and commanding attention. When all is said and done when you view his work it stirs our passion for life and art. What would be his fate today in the art world? Very good question! I believe we have grown in our value of art and would give him many ribbons.

Van Gogh, not unlike Sabiston today, had an amazing ability with Colour; Richness, and Depth to capture one in the visual realm. Subject matter; enduring, timeless, most importantly soulful.

I think Van Gogh did what we all wish we could do as an artist…he painted what he liked in a style unique to his abilities and studies, he followed his passion despite criticism and poverty, and he put his art before anything else, even his own well-being. It’s not just the pieces he created that are admirable, it’s his commitment to the craft.

I think you missed the point of Ms Sabiton’s question. She asked why it is popular with the average person. Average people rarely agree with the choices of juror’s. My opinion is that the combination of bright clean colors, and strokes put down with great energy make viewers feel good. I think it is plain that Van Gogh was totally absorbed in his work and enjoying the process. That translates directly to the viewer, even if that viewer has no formal art training.

One of the better blogs you have done Robert. That’s why we say “fall in love with process”

I really, really enjoy reading this every time I receive it. Thanks, Robert for a point of view that gets us to think and feel our art.

I never was a fan of Vincent’s work – UNTIL I had a chance to see it in person. Somehow the photo reproductions don’t do justice to his intensity of color and his compelling brush strokes. I think he might just do very well in salon competition in Muggsville, Saskatchewan. Although he’d have to find the place first. I’ve been to Plunkett, Elbow and Love, but will have to check the map to zone in for a summer visit to Muggsville.

The reasons you give for the popularity of Vincent’s paintings are surely relevant but not specific to Vincent. Dozens of other painters at the time and thousands since painted in original styles, had entrepreneurial dealers, and so on. Your casual asides hint at reasons more specific to Vincent’s work, such as these. + His paintings show straightforwardness, openness. With Vincent, what you see is what you get. He paints images of familiar, recognizable objects, nothing mysterious or hard to decipher. While it is true that his colors are more intense than those we see in daily life and sometimes shocking to viewers even today, still his color relationships are not intentionally distorted in the manner of expressionist painters like Franz Marc. Vincent does not cover his tracks. You can see every touch he made to the canvas. He makes no attempt to hide what he feels about his subjects, either. With Vincent, everything’s right there in front of you, so as a viewer you feel that he has put himself forward fearlessly and therefore that he wants you to know him and love him. + We feel that Vincent is sincere. Nothing about his work is ironic, snide, dishonest, slick, or calculated to impress. His drawing, for instance, is unpolished, often crude by academic standards. Others might have been ashamed of it and worked for years to draw in a more accepted, sophisticated way, but not Vincent. And he doesn’t try to hide his drawing or avoid drawing problems by leaving out what’s too hard to draw, nor does he show off his untutored manner like many contemporary artists do, Cy Twombly, for instance. He wears his heart on his sleeve. + Vincent invites us to indulge in sensuous pleasure. He gives us gorgeous pure colors and arranges them harmoniously, textures so strong that the impulse to touch is almost irresistible, heaving corn fields, writhing cypresses, radiating stars. “Look on these and feel” he tells us. These qualities — openness, sincerity, and uninhibited indulgence in pleasure — are much admired today, much more so than in Vincent’s own time. Perhaps they account for his current popularity. If our culture changes so that sophistication, canniness, and self-restraint become dominant values, perhaps Vincent’s popularity would fade.

In these day and age where there are painters of all ages and places it is elusive .Popularity is promoted by networking and by advertisement by some.True popularity I think comes when your work is unique in a style identifiable as your own.

We know 3M for Post It notes. Vincent was there first: Marketing – Marquee Player – touch of Magic

I fully agree— to me, his art imparts the struggle he had as a human being by his application of paint, strong colors and aggressive brushwork, which we all experience at some point in our lives.

BUT – during his lifetime, Vincent was not popular at all and could not sell his work. Not only did he die young, he also cut off his own ear. Chalk it up to an insanely well-marketed brand?

Thanks for your wonderful letter about dear Vincent. Here is another of his quotes: As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed. If you have never read his letters to his brother, do so as you would enjoy them and I think be amazed at his genius(not only found in his paintings.) When he painted he looked for the soul of the subject to fill that ” white board.” In his letters, you will find the life-like person of Vincent. Truly, one of the best books I’ve read. Not a portrayal of a suffering soul but of a striving one.

VAN GOGH is universal…his popularity has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with raw talent. artists I know often say if only this or that I would be able to make a living with my work: actually if only they were different enough to do something original that people wanted to see they would be more inclined towards success. When I was very small I saw a van gogh painting in a book and loved it, at 3 I don’t think I was under anyone’s influence except mine [my parents had no art interest]. I think today there are too many artists and not enough art.

I’m sure that Van Gogh’s work would be thrown out as crude and un-painterly.

Robert, with all due respect, Van Gogh is loved for his ability to touch the human heart. His work moves people to tears. It is truth, passion, …..soul…..

I must tell you about the time I taught art with children in a farm/rural community (where I grew up…Ohio)…I showed a slide show of famous artists to 2nd graders and when the van Gogh’s appeared on the wall they started clapping. Each van Gogh slide…clapping…roaring clapping. I was so moved. When I stand before a van Gogh painting it feels like HE is there. His truth/life force came through him raw and powerfully and that truth is still there in those colors and strokes. Everyone wants to clap in front of raw truth!

Sadly, there are those who would take great delight in the financial appreciation of a body of work knowing full well the Creator died penniless. It is the kind of heartless story that will cynically inspire the minions in trade to go forth and financially conquer in similar fashion. That is why as Artists I humbly feel we should not concern ourselves with populace when it comes to the work. More so appreciation for our treatment of our subject matter, and the guts we may have revealed. I paint athletes who are very much a part of the populace, but my goal is to capture their process. The lines they have crossed, the lines they have stayed within. I want to create an expression of challenges they faced as Athletes translated through the challenges I faced as an Athlete, Coach and Artist. I want to experience our relative sensibilities when I meet them, and we share the work. I also want them to see something in the work that says I was thoughtful in the treatment beyond populace. I aspire to participate in the artistic process knowing the cultural separations that take place between Art and Sports giving me a purpose to create connective tissue that goes beyond the work, and who bought it. Make no mistake I want someone to buy it, so that I may do more of it, but I don’t want my intention as an Artist to be overwhelmed by populace, and the resulting commerce. I don’t think Vincent would want the celebrity his amazing work has attained. I humbly think the process he went through to create it gave him enough. I also think it was having to live that process without understanding that made him the short lived star that became the penniless painter whose work sells in the multimillions. I think that is painfully obvious to us all.

By focusing on the element of popularity, this discussion dodges the question of how great an artist Vincent was or wasn’t. Some of your remarks are even condescending: “amateur crudeness and naiveté.” Vincent was far from naïve; like his brother Theo he had been in the art dealership business and was related to a popular and accomplished artist of his time. An examination of Vincent’s drawings shows his keen powers of observation, which are far from primitive. I would say that Vincent’s art became popular in the long run because its vitality that comes across unmistakably, along with a powerful sense of color and texture. The Impressionists brought a new consciousness of color theory into the art of painting, and Vincent was well aware of this. All of which brings us to the matter of his greatness. Romanticism had brought the element of feeling into art, but such work was about feeling. Vincent’s art was the direct expression of feeling, and so he is credited with being the father of a whole movement which came to be called Expressionism. However, Vincent’s merit does not rest on his influence. As indicated, an encounter with his work provides a powerful visual experience.

Can’t it be that Vincent van Gogh’s painting are close to being objectively almost perfect? Maybe there is an innate appreciation for the ‘ right’ composition, overall treatment of the canvas, love for a concise colourism? I find it quite arrogant to talk about ‘average people’, as if we artists are above or have more right to judge other artist’s work. A nearly perfect painting is just as perfect to the untrained eye as it is to the experienced.

Vincent has long been my favourite artist – not because he died young. But because he painted with his heart and soul. And he painted things as he saw them and experienced them. Maybe he was seeing images in his madness – but maybe seeing a bit of truth too. I think he painted quickly – even furiously – wanting to capture the essence of what he saw before it disappeared. Visions in the mind are not permanent – just fleeting moments. I hope that the jurors would see that passion in his paintings today as well.

I know very little about the life of Van Gogh, but I did have an opportunity to see an exhibit of his drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and there was not a wink to be seen in the eyes of anyone else who was there. The man was fantastic, mixing pencils, black ink, and chalk, and almost every single item on display showed a fluidity in his style that is not always evident in his paintings. He deserves to be popular.

I have lived most of my life in the western US and saw Van Gogh only in the flat representations. I would fit into your dinner guest’s category of mass appreciators. In my late forties, I got a chance to go to New York. I scheduled an extra day in the city to see the Met and met my first Van Gogh face to face. The meeting was electric and visceral. I bet your fictional jury will have the same response and multiple blue ribbons. I started painting after 50 and my work is definitely inspired by Van Gogh both in the colors and the depth of the texture.

Rather than ascribe Vincent’s popularity to marketing, is there anything wrong with respectfully giving a remarkable artist his due? I hope Vincent’s work would find itself in a juried show, but these days acceptance is confined to what is marketable rather than its own merit. Art history classes tell students who is a great artist. Most believe it because they lack the knowledge to assess the work themselves. Why do I like Van Gogh? Because I see the despair he lived with in his work. He was brutally honest in painting that angst. It took courage to pursue his own imitable style, distinguishable from all others. Thus, a Van Gogh is more recognizable to the general public. Regardless of circumstance, anyone who dies young takes on an immortal reputation: Poe, Keats, Buddy Holly, JFK, Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, and Vincent. People not necessarily interested in art know well the struggles Vincent suffered. I believe they embrace his art because struggle is universal to the human experience. Branding doesn’t have to be a negative (a particular popular artist with his own galleries comes to mind). If art can be brought into mainstream acceptance we’re all winners. Awareness is crucial to developing the next generation of art patrons.

Van Gogh, while passionate and dedicated, was still an amateur, which has given hope to many an artist.

I think that Vincent’s paintings are popular simply because they are terrific. His compositions, choice of colors and brushstrokes are exquisite. I have seen thousands of images, but I vividly remember Vincent’s. Before I studied his work I thought that anyone could do it – but that’s also part of his genius – he made it all look easy. I think that this appearance of easiness is what deceives many people.

Dear Robert – – You make some very salient points regarding the reasons for Van Gogh’s near universal veneration. I can add to your list. Van Gogh’s family was a family of art dealers. They saved all of his work. That could not have hurt his road to acceptance and fame. There was also the profoundly beautiful documentation of his life in his letters to his brother, Theo. You also speak of his “compulsive sincerity.” And that point should be elaborated. For almost every major Van Gogh painting, there exists an ink drawing in a similar scale. These drawings illustrate quite clearly that the apparent compulsiveness in Van Gogh’s painting was completely premeditated. He had used a broad pen nib to pre- figure most every stoke of his brush. When I saw these ink drawings they seemed like x-rays of the finished paintings. Van Gogh certainly had mental problems, but his art had little to do with that. He planned each painting in black and white. He found the structure, the bones of each painting, before he painted it. People make a great deal about Van Gogh’s mental problems, and this just fuels the misconception that artists are crazy. When one studies Van Gogh’s art, it is supremely sane. He figured out each painting in advance. He may have been crazy, but his art was his sanity.

All I can say is that whenever we get to The Metropolitan Museum in NYC the first thing my husband and I do is “visit” Vincent. We go straight to the small self portrait under glass to say “hello”, then on to the collection. MOMA also has some wonderful van Goghs that we never tire of looking at with great appreciation and respect for his genius….Vincent’s drawings and paintings “speak”…and he remains a favorite. Now here’s a funny story….for some reason, in all my studies, I never paid attention to or maybe just forgot about Van Gogh’s painting “Shoes”….I had no idea when I looked out of my front door one day to see a pair of work shoes on the trailer of the contractor who was doing some work at my home. My God, I thought, those shoes are awesome and would make a great painting. I ran for my sketchbook and the camera and within a few days had completed “The Workman’s Shoes” in acrylic…it ultimately won a prize at a NJ art show, and currently belongs to a NJ family. On a later visit to the Metropolitan, my mouth fell open and I stopped abruptly in my tracks for there just opposite Vincent’s portrait was now hanging the original “Shoes”. I swear I had nothing else in mind when I decided to paint my workman’s shoes! Pike County, PA

i have a friend, Kimberly Young (Mawbear), who suddenly created a large number of “outsider” paintings last year, most of which i consider extraordinarily good works. i even traded my best piece for one of hers. a lot of people like her work of last year. my own critique of it is that she has an inate ability to compose a good picture and was desparate enough to try some techniques that worked. it jelled. my own work has had its fans but for the most part i expect indifference from most people. someone will love one piece and not care at all for the rest. popular artists, to me, have not included Van Gogh, but have been people who painted soup cans and calendar pictures. they are media creations who become wined & dined and are courted by the public. they may have some real talent but mostly they have really good agents. Van Gogh is not of this ilk of artist. his art was personal and often not even appealing. HE and his art are only now popular BECAUSE he’s been sold to us, post mortem. his brother was his biggest fan and his life was rough to the extreme. pick your poison, they say, and choose what kind of popularity you might want – or not want. i would like to make a few quid on my stuff but not have the kind of spotlight that would MAKE me crazy.

I feel there are other reasons that made Vincent’s works draw our attention towards them. His works are Timeless i.e. their appeal will not change with the time, society may change, our aesthetic sensibilities or responses to visual stimuli may take new courses but Timeless quality embodied in the works will not diminish their appeal.

Is van Gogh a phenomenal artist, or just a compelling sad story of an artist that like his art, touches so many? Like Pollack, For one example, I think he was he just the first to do something radically different and continued to do so, no matter how many famous artists he hung out ridiculed him or how much no one embraced it? Unfortunately in his case, it was too late when the “Right” person(s) decided to make something of his work and crown him the master of his own domain. Just ask anyone, if van Gogh is a great artist… and most I’m sure would say “Of course” (even though they may not really think so or simply don’t have a clue). This is the fallacy called argumentum ad numeram: the idea that something is true because the masses believe it. Just because most people believe something doesn’t make it true. Like with Global warming, somehow the average ordinary person’s opinion means something when the only opinions that really count are the few scientists capable of having a clue. Had he lived to paint into his senior years… I think he would have eventually found a following (like many “more mature” artists do) but I doubt he would have soared to the heights reserved for Gods and superstars. He was packaged and marketed, just like scores of artists are today. There are many van Goghs out there right now and even if they suffered an early demise, it probably wouldn’t make a difference to their popularity because “He” has already been done.

The answer to Van Gogh’s popularity is found in the last word of the first sentence of your second paragraph…SINCERITY. Any painting of any age or time, that is painted with sincerity and honesty will touch our hearts.

There are many ignorant artists who think that they are as good as Vincent. That is a delusion that can only be dispelled by a visit to a museum which carries Vincent’s originals. There is nobody today, or in the past who comes close to his quality of art.

I did not appriciate Van Gogh’s work as I attended art school in the 60’s until I had a chance to see his works in person. His works were bright, live and exciting in life. It was similar to seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. I was never that impressed with the photos of the Grand Canyon because I was not able to see the depth. Van Gogh’s paintings were very thick and the dimensional effect are what added life to his pieces. The lighting in the gallery also had a lot to do with the beauty of the display.

Van Gogh is someone I never really liked until recently. I think it is because his “Starie Night” picture didn’t look look like a starie night or his sun flowers really didn’t look like sun flowers. None of his pictures look like what they were. They were the wrong colors the wrong size, etc. They is exactly what I LIKE ABOUT HIS PICTURES NOW. Everyone sees differently. I, nor he, can really paint a flower. It will not look exactly like a flower, to be a flower. To try is to be disappointed and frustrated and than see parts to pick apart. If that exact copy image is what is sought, take a picture, blow it up to desired size, crop it and be done. If you realize from the start you are doing an art flower, or sky, it can be anything. That is why Van Gogh is popular. That is why I like his work now. The colors, shapes, movement, etc. He painted what only he saw.

It is the passion, definitely, the passion, that literally jumps off the canvas and into your soul when you stand in front of a Van Gogh. I stood in front of his works in Paris with tears streaming down my face. It was a spiritual thing, a communion with his very soul. The colors, the light, the brush strokes–he couldn’t have communicated the passion any better if he had been standing there speaking to me.

Vincent’s popularity had to do with two major points: Marketing and Accessibility. His brother’s wife did a really good job promoting Vincent’s work after both Vincent and her husband Theo died. She proved a very astute marketeer. That and the fact that van Gogh’s letters were edited and published made the persona, a tormented man with a great passion for preaching and painting, accessible to a wider public. It was a time when passion and crude paint application became of interest, a backlash after the Golden Age of Realism wherein artists had attained a high degree of artistic ability as well as technical facility. Van Gogh was a grafter, a man who struggled with his limited abilities as a painter as well as with the confining coda of bourgeois society. His background, growing up in Nuenen, just round the corner from where my mother lives, in the heart of what was then a backward and poverty-stricken farming area of Netherlands, and his experiences as a lay preacher in the Borinage mining region in Belgium, gave him a critical view of the “juste milieu” —the art buying patrons. And yet he too felt the need for success just like any other artist. Luckily for him the facade of art was breaking up into smaller fragments that were moving away from each other, and this created niches for artists of the like of naive painter Le Douanier and van Gogh. Thanks to the published letters the public could identify with van Gogh, a man of the people and not a distant, refined Beau Monde icon on a pedestal. We mustn’t forget however, that van Gogh’s fame wasn’t instant, and had much to do with art historians and critics jumping on the bandwagon of the avant-garde much later in the 20th century. Revolution and provocation became key-words for the avant-garde, a movement in need of outsider heroes. Van Gogh, though long dead, became in retrospect a figure-head of the movement.

We have been hearing that talent, craft, body of cohesive work, scholarship and persistence will do it. However, nowadays really popular it is what is in style– trendy, cutting- edge sensationalism, post modernist non-values and generous patrons who will underwrite and publicize such a show, commercial or otherwise. Iris, also called giclee prints, are popular. They look like the real thing, and most people don’t care or know what they are buying. They can be priced much less than original art and some feel they can’t survive by charging the price of an original. It is a personal decision— I do not do giclee prints; Artists I know do not consider giclee prints as “art”. Also, if you are the only artist for miles around, your work may be popular. In a geographical area where beautiful professional art is a dime a dozen, then it will have a difficult time.

Van Gogh’s work is as honest and fresh today as it was back then. His “crude” quality did more to inspire me to paint than anything else. I have often reassured myself with Van Gogh when reading parts of your letters that mention sub par art. I am self taught because I was busy with a full time radio career in Houston, Tx for 30 years. An artist is one who cannot “not” create. Now I am a working, selling artist in Taos, New Mexico. Van Gogh painted because he found joy in it and so do I.

Why Vincent is so admired in popular culture is in part because of the story told; struggling, poor, in pain, rejected; it all helps tell a fascinating story, but that isn’t enough to explain the attraction by the “average” person. Stand in front of his paintings and feel the pulsating vibrations that come off the canvass, be dazzled by the swirling skies and feel the languorous summer heat as two “average” peasants take a mid-day break from their back-breaking work. It is the intensity of life and the spirit struggling to convey it that is recognized and appreciated. It is one human being – the viewer – looking at what another person – the painter – is feeling and getting back the richness of spirit that is in all of us, but with Vincent expressed so explosively even to the point of self annihilation. But it is real. And that is what the ‘average” person relates to.

In answer to your question… It all depends on the jurors. One may be looking for something entirely new to him/her and be fascinated when finding what they may think of as innovative work. Another may be subjective favoring only what he feels is true art, not what he is seeing, and another may be either of the above, even objective and simply be looking for a proper composition blended with the right balance of color. I’ve given up on second guessing jurors no matter where the show or where the jurors live but I’d give this Vincent Van Gogh a 50/50 chance of being included in the Muggsville Salon.

Just wondering Robert – after reading the comments on the continuing popularity of Van Gogh’s work and reading the responses. Some being that it was his passion and creative genius, others saying that it was his sister-in-law’s marketing abilities and yet another comment about how he belonged to the movement of painters that flouted the conventions of the salon and that he rebelled like many of his peers against the status quo of the day. This caused me to pause and wonder as an artist – what is the status quo of our day. What is it that we are being told. Indeed that is a question that each of us could ruminate on. I feel that we are told that we need to market and the true measure of sucess is money. The buzz words of the day are: Production and getting known and that art really is a business. i feel that much of what it really means to be an artist is lost in our modern age. There are some things we have no control over like as in vincent’s case weather we will become great or not. What I see about vincent Van Gogh and many other truly great artists is that they painted (and lots) and the rest really took care of itself. The journey was a process, a self-discovery, a life-time. Anyway, I know I have rambled but my question is what is our salon today, what are the rules that we are told to follow? Thanks Jackie

You have to ask yourself if you’d have purchased one of his paintings off the easel, when he was producing them. No one else did. Styles change, often when the previous style has stultified and become restrictive and formulaic. There is always a little rebellion in the wings waiting to shock the pool and freshen it up. The new stuff might be intentionally different, or just the product of someone with different technical acumen, different vision, or perhaps it’s all the person can do. In any case, only time (obviously) reveals its continuing impact, and time can relegate it to the dustbins now, or later. Styles change because the market– the audience– needs change. Vincent happened to be there at the right time. But for Theo’s wife, Vincent might have missed the window. You have to wonder if he will still be popular during the next hundred years or be relegated to footnotes of history as so many other popular artists have been. I think that his being, arguably, (part of) a stylistic shift catalyst will give him a better than even chance of surviving in the main text, but only time will tell if he will still be hung in mass market reproductions.