About the Art of Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh is considered one of the most influential and popular artists who ever lived. His paintings sell for tens of millions at auctions and are proudly featured in museums around the world. Van Gogh's status in the world of art today would probably surprise most of the people who knew him. Van Gogh sold only two of his paintings while he was alive, suffered frequent bouts of madness and eventually killed himself. In many ways, he is the iconic example of the struggling, starving artist whose genius goes unappreciated in his own time.

In addition to his status as the quintessential starving artist, Van Gogh can also be an inspiration for those who decide to follow their dreams late in life. He was already 27 years old when he first began to seriously consider a life as an artist. Due to his tragically young death, this means that the entire bulk of his output was created in a frenzied yet amazingly productive 10-year span. Even more astonishing is that the majority of his most well-known and successful paintings were done in the last 30 months of his life.

Van Gogh is known today for his vibrant colors that seem to leap off the canvas, but the first half of his painting career, from 1880 to 1885, he worked exclusively in dark hues. These years were spent in Holland and his subject was the earth and the people who worked the earth. His most famous painting from this period is "The Potato Eaters," an almost expressionist portrait of peasant misery. The dark, somber hues act as a social commentary on the economic displacement of the poor farmers.

In 1888 Van Gogh moved to Arles, France, and fell under the influence of the Impressionists who were using bright colors and moving farther away from the naturalist style. At this time he also began to drift away from the idea of art as social commentary and toward a more personal and subjective style. In fact, many of the most famous paintings from his time in Arles had two distinct motivations: an examination of the emotional power of colors and, more simply, decorations for his envisioned commune.

One of the most distinctive traits of Van Gogh's painting is the thick, dynamic brush strokes that often appear squiggly. The dramatic impact of the brush strokes combine with the equally expressive use of colors to suggest emotional temperament. Thus his famous painting, "The Starry Night," successfully transforms what might be just another nighttime scene into a cosmic event populated by swirling clouds and expressive fireballs.

Although technically considered a Neo-Impressionist artist, Van Gogh is the essential example of painting a subject not merely to duplicate it, but as he personally experienced it. As a result, although his subject matter always remained representative, his style imbues it with a sense of wonder. It is Van Gogh's impression of the subjects that we see rather than simply an objective rendering of the subject.

The reason that Van Gogh has been identified as a Neo-Impressionist painter rather than simply an Impressionist painter is that he eventually came to discard many of the ideas about objective and scientific analysis of the use of color. In his later paintings, he began to use color symbolically to bring forth an emotional component.

Van Gogh's painting are all signed with his first name of Vincent rather than his last name. He reasoned that most people would not be able to accurately pronounce his last name. This proved to be a wise decision, as his name is routinely mispronounced today. The correct pronunciation is actually closer to "Van Oh" than it is to "Van Go."