Just saw the Van Gogh exhibition at MOMA here in New York( Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night), and, as I’m writing on my IPhone, I can’t hyperlink (and downloading photos of Van Gogh’s work in the exhibition so I can upload it to ArtNYC is too much trouble, especially on a handheld. Just follow my thoughts and go over to Moma.org if you want to see more Van Gogh paintings).

Note: I updated this post to add hyperlinks and photos of Van Gogh’s work.

I loved the show and many of Vincent’s paintings such as the Potato Eater, The Sower and Stary Night under the Rhone are masterpieces of feeling from a man that had a large heart and a great love of humanity, even if, as a human being, he may have been a difficult person to be around.

The Sowers is a fantastic painting, the energy, heart, that rises from the field is magnificent, the essence of art; the clumsy figure of the Sower, is almost not needed, perhaps he’d been better off with just painting the Sower’s bag of seeds, instead.

The Starry Night painting I mentioned, above, is just about, the most powerful painting I’ve ever seen (and I noticed the Big Dipper constellation after I stepped away, as if Van Gogh fused his emotive expressionism with universality. And there were other powerful works the kept me transfixed for a while.

But I noticed something else, a perception that I wasn’t all that comfortable with; it’s entirely possible were Van Gogh to live today, given his love of “country life” and “hard work in the fields”, Vincent might well end up a Republican, a McCain supporter, even!   Ugh!

I think Edward Winkleman will have my head for this, but, I think, Van Gogh’s worship of the “simple life” morphs into Republican Midwest ideology with the land and simple virtues (even if those same people end up also be the worst sinners) much more than the Democratic virtues of Barack Obama.

It seems that many Europeans were rebelling against the husk of their own intellectual heritage, a rebellion that ran into the 20th Century.

Europeans of Van Gogh’s generation sought to escape, in different ways; one went to Bora Bora, others to the South of France, most went to worship light and the living landscape.

And while almost all the artists were intellectuals (Van Gogh read all the time and spoke 4 languages).

But what makes Van Gogh, a likely Republican, had he lived today, is his absoluteness, he worshiped simple virtues that were more in his imagination, then his subjects.

It’s not that he was wrong - infact, his belief in Brotherhood, is clearly Democratic …. But the worship of the Simple Life has more in common with a Norman Rockwell or Grant Wood painting, than his own real roots, as a European.

And he escaped, he could not reconcile those opposites, which makes his paintings and drawing very captivating.

But, as much as I would like to have known him, I suspect,on a personal level, I would have had just as hard a time, today, that many others had, when the Artist lived.

Which, is to say, Vincent Van Gogh’s work transends his own, perhaps, limited and neive, view of his own world, and touches us, today, through time, space and technique,

I meant to write about this earlier - I’ve always wondered if Second Life could be used to recreate Great Paintings and then move around in the painting.  One of the all time favorite paintings is Van Gogh’s Starry Night - I wonder how that would look in Second Life.

I suppose this is the closest thing to that idea that I’ve seen (above).