I could not resist posting this image of an impressionist Art Cake care of BoingBoing -

I want to see more cakes like this one – this is one of the nicest cakes I’ve ever seen.   Wonder how a Cezanne would look as a Cake ….ha!

Checked the Flickr photostream to see if there was any others who want to shove their face into this cake (or maybe, just behold it) but I saw no other examples of impressionist cake art …. too bad, the artist ought to do more of them.

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,

Van Gogh’s paintings and, as much so, his drawings, are compelling (according to the Vincent van Gogh Gallery “..As a post impressionist painter and one of the most famous artists of all time, Vincent van Gogh has become an icon“). 

Meanwhile, a WikiPedia post on Van Gogh points out that “…Vincent and his friend Emile Bernard, who lived with parents in Asnières, adopted elements of the “pointillé” (pointillism) style, where many small dots are applied to the canvas, resulting in an optical blend of hues, when seen from a distance. The theory behind this also stresses the value of complementary colours^[53] (for example, blue and orange), which form vibrant contrasts and enhance each other, when juxtaposed.^[54]“.

 

I meant to go over to see Van Gogh letters to Émile Bernard at the Morgan Library & Museum tonight but didn’t make it (and I bet it would have been closed after 6 PM on a Friday night anyway); the New York Times has a pretty good article and slide show on the Van Gogh show.

“…You will encounter Bernard, too, though far less directly. A minor French painter, prolific writer, tireless networker and van Gogh advocate, he’s present in a few early paintings and prints and a book, but primarily in van Gogh’s salutation, which opens nearly all the letters: “My dear old Bernard.”

The two men met in studio classes in Paris. Van Gogh, a 30-something Dutch ex-art dealer and ex-preacher, was trying to figure out a place for himself in contemporary art. Bernard, a precocious Paris teenager, was trying to do the same. Despite their age difference, they became friends.”

Should be interesting to see Van Gogh’s writings along with his drawings; I’ve read his letters, translated into English several  years ago and they’re inspiring. 

Will make it a point to visit this show before it closes next January.

Reminds me of something I was thinking about today (several hours after starting this post) – the value of an artist is in how meaningful their work is to people who did not know them.  

When I behold this sketch/painting of Van Gogh, done with love and given in a letter to his friend, Émile Bernard, I’m reminded of how good, how true and powerful Van Gogh’s painting is.  Yet this is the same Van Gogh that my favorite painter, Paul Cezanne, didn’t like – for that matter, most artists that Van Gogh hung out with felt he was too radical, too crazy for them….as I recall by reading and seeing material about his life.

Does it matter?  No.   Whatever your contemporaries think of you, even the great artists it matters not – because the relationship of the artist is with the viewer, across time and space ..and that is the covenant one wants to keep – not other people’s opinions, even if, they, in themselves, are great artists.

The validity of work… is the work itself outside the reality of it was created in.

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).