Van Gogh- His astonishing final years - National Gallery - YouTube

Over and over again, Van Gogh must see something, he must represent reality, but at the same time as he represents it, he is willing to enlarge it, to expand it, to turn it into something more magnificent. He decided in early 1888 it was probably worthwhile to go elsewhere, find a new environment without the distractions of Paris, and so he decided to go south to Provence. What we know is that he had a project to go down south to Marseilles to buy some paintings of a famous painter at that time called Monticelli. Most of the paintings he did here were everyday life, you know, the public gardens, the countryside, harvest, and it was amazing to him discovering these landscapes. Everything was exotic to him, so different from the Netherlands, so different from Paris. But arriving here, it reminded him of the contrast of the Japanese prints, and that's exactly the style he adapted here. All these techniques came from the Japanese prints. Van Gogh knew London, Paris, so when he arrived here, he was looking for a very authentic kind of living. I think he brings some phantasma about what is living in the house of France. I'm not sure he was conscious of it, but he has produced some of the most important images of Arles during its own modernity. I think it was the novelty of this combination of old and new that captured his attention and made him realize that here was a kind of motif that no one else had been painting, and maybe he would be alone in capturing this particular new reality. He is beginning that process of turning observed reality into something grander, finer, richer. At the end of his first year in Arles, he has a kind of breakdown. In the hospital at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh was allowed to go into the garden and then further afield. Very often he doesn't look at the expanse of the garden, but he looks right down at the ground. So we are immersed in what must be a hundred different shades of green. The asylum at Saint-Rémy still exists today, and the nurses there actually use art therapy as part of their treatment program. There are also people for whom it simply allows them to reveal themselves and express themselves. There are people for whom it really gives meaning to their lives, who were able to reveal themselves thanks to this place. The light in Provence is particular. It is a light that is extremely clear and that is totally the opposite of the light that can be found in Holland, in Belgium, in England and even in Paris. So this light will have an effect both on the drawing, on the scenes that Van Gogh will observe and on the landscapes, and on the colour. Close to the reality, it's important to understand the light and the effects of the light on the environment, on the flowers, on a wall. In the afternoon light, this very, very clear light, very, very full, will allow the eye to look very, very far and to have all the details, so to really have the cutting of the shapes. We can see very well the buildings, the trees, the hills being cut on the horizon line, and we can see that for miles and miles and miles. Even when times were bad in Vincent's life, he could find great beauty in nature. He could respond with directness and spontaneity. As Picasso said, he was the painter who moved him the most because you can feel a great accuracy in painting, subjects that are very simple. There is no construction of the subject, there is no reflection, it's a landscape, a dead nature, a portrait, but which are worked with a lot of simplicity, a lot of audacity, but which are always extremely accessible in their reading. Everyone can understand these paintings, everyone can understand the expressions, the colour games. There is something of a great readability. We must not forget that Van Gogh was someone who also had a lot of great intellectual qualities. Looking back, we realise that those two years that Van Gogh spent in Provence, in Arles, in Saint-Vermy, are a watershed. They are his most creative years where the full brilliance of his art is realised. No one creates art of such innovation only out of their troubles. It is also necessary to be healthy in order to create at such a high level. He is an artist conscious of creating a new kind of imagery, conscious of how he is going to promote himself, conscious of how he wants people across Europe to see and think about his art as a highly intelligent sequence of images that it pays to think of in relation one to the other.