Posted: Monday 29 November 2010
Talking Points: The Life and Works of Vincent van Gogh
Professor Anthony Slinn, artist and art historian, gave S6 pupils an enlightening and engaging talk on the life and works of Vincent van Gogh who he describes as the "greatest artist that ever lived." Peter Aitken [S6] reports.
Slinn is a painter who spent 30 years teaching at art colleges then set-up his ‘Roadshow' to share his enthusiasm for art and artists.
"The two main things people know about van Gogh", he said, "are that one of his painting sold recently for £53 million and that he cut his left ear off."
He explained that van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853 and he was the son of a local vicar. He was a deeply religious man who became a preacher in Belgium and a teacher in London at a small school and then he discovered painting. He was an educated man who was able to speak four different languages fluently.
His younger brother, Theo, lived in Paris and was an art collector who dealt in the new wave of avant-garde paintings that were hitting the market at the time, during the so-called, 'Impressionist' era, where paintings focused mainly on air, light and colour. "Impression is basically painting landscapes outdoors," said Slinn.
Vincent and Theo wrote a letter a week to each other for 35 years and their correspondence was collected and published in three volumes.
The vast majority of Vincent's life, Slinn explained, was spent in Arles, in the South of France. It was his vision to create a "studio of the South." It was there that his paintings took a whole new direction and his style of painting became unrecognisable. He painted some of his best work including Bedroom in Arles, Van Gogh's Chair and Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers. He used a method of "impasto pigmentation" which is where the paint is put on so thickly that "blind people can tell what is it."
Slinn told us that the reason van Gogh cut his ear off was a "desperate cry for help. He was severely depressed." Unfortunately, he went onto commit suicide in 1890, aged just 37.
Professor Slinn has given this talk several hundred times, but it still sounded fresh to us!