NOT ONLY VINCENT, BUT SYLVIA, JOSIEN AND JANNE…
For the National Gallery of Victoria International, ’tis the season to be ecstatic. Not only have they pulled off the largest Van Gogh exhibition in Australia, but they’ve lured members of the Van Gogh family here to help launch it.
At the media preview of Van Gogh and the Seasons on Thursday, April 27,
I met the two great- grandnieces of Vincent’s brother, Theo: Sylvia Cramer and Josien van Gogh who also had her adult daughter, Janne (great-great-grandniece) in tow.
“Not a creative bone in our bodies, “ they tell me. “We’re down-to-earth, practical people. ”
I asked them if they knew of our Aussie Dutch filmmaker, Paul Cox, who was an ardent fan of Vincent – not only making a film about the artist, but also naming his cafe Vincent’s Place. Even though Cox has passed away, the Albert Park cafe still exists on the ground floor of his last residence. They said they would love to visit this cafe if their schedule permitted.
“Ah, yes “, says Josien, “my brother, Theodoor, knew him very well. Theo too was a renowned film director in the Netherlands.“
Sadly, that filmmaker and activist brother was gunned down in November 2004 by a Dutch Moroccan extremist who didn’t like Theo’s TV exposure of the violence against women in some Islamic societies.
But the Van Gogh women’ s focus today is on the excitement of being in Australia at the launch of this glorious exhibition. Interestingly, Sylvia and Josien don’t have even one of great – grand uncle Vincent’s paintings in their homes. Rather than let the collection gather dust in their attics, or make a fortune selling the paintings, the family formed the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation and loaned the works to a permanent home in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. From there , they were made accessible to other galleries around the world.
They have with them Sjraar van Heugten, former Head of Collections of the Museum. He’s an avid art historian and has read all of Vincent’s letters. Face like a middle-aged cherub , ringed by grey curls, Sjraar is your go -to -man for anything Van Gogh. He was the one who approached the NGV and Art Exhibitions Australia with the concept of a Four Seasons Exhibition. It is he who helped NGV director, Tony Ellwood and Senior Curator, Ted Gott to set up this latest Winter Masterpieces show.
He is a fascinating font of information about Vincent. One could listen to him for hours. “ There are so many aspects to his art. You never get tired of his work and there’re many great letters where he reveals so much about himself and his close relationship with his art dealer brother, Theo.”
Sjraar debunks the myth that Vincent was a poor. Van Gogh admired the farm workers, often poor people who worked hard in all seasons, and glorified them as being close to Nature or God . They were the ones who understood the elements, the land, when to sow and when to reap. At one point, he chose to live simply like a religious mendicant. But he always had his brother to help him out, sell his work, send him canvases and paints. The two brothers were very fond of each other. Interesting to note, Theo died only months after Vincent, who shot himself in one of the glorious wheat fields as depicted in the current show. Vincent was only 37. Born in the Dutch region of Brabant in 1853, he died in France in 1890.
The other myth, Sjraar claims, was about the artists’s insanity. Vincent’s letters reveal a deeply spiritual man who was a great thinker and feeler. They don’t read like the output of a madman.
Sure, by the end, he was becoming somewhat irrational, cutting off his ear and ending up in an asylum in France ,shortly thereafter, committing suicide. Many medical symposia have come up with theories. Was it epilepsy? Was it an alcohol – induced psychosis? No one know for sure, but Sjraar favours the second theory.
Anyway, all this is overshadowed by the genius of his output. Vincent was a painter for only 10 years, but he left behind around 800 works.
His early works were grim, dark, and did not appeal to his contemporaries. It was only after he left his native Holland and went to live in Paris, that he was exposed to the possibilities of colour and began to understand what it was all about. He was also introduced to, and influenced by, Japanese art which was in vogue there. Some examples of which are displayed in this exhibition.
Sjraar thinks it must have been tough for Vincent those early days in Paris. The realisation that he had to totally change his styles an artist. But change he did and his life in rural France produced some of his greatest works, all in around 2-3 years. He was inspired by striking new ways of using colour, experimenting with new brush strokes. He was prolific, producing 70 works in the last 70 days of his life.
Many of the glorious paintings in this Melbourne exhibition, are the result of his tuning into the French landscape, imbibing the essences of the seasons as a spiritual fillip. For Vincent, the seasons represented the cycle of life: birth, bloom, maturity and death.
You too can fill up on these seasonal evocations, as you make your way from one section to another, divided by diaphanous black screens, at the NGV.
First you walk through autumn, perhaps his favourite season. Bountiful harvests and solitary figures sowing seeds.
Then Winter. Peasants digging potatoes out of frozen fields, or sharing a meagre meal by candlelight.
Next Spring, with it’s blossoming orchards and flowering meadows.
Finally, Summer with its fields of ripe wheat shimmering under the hot sun.
There’s also a lot of additional material, including a major multimedia installation, for you to explore and learn more about this famous artist.
His work is a timely reminder of how much modern life has removed us from Nature. When is the correct time to plant the pip or harvest the apple? How many of us modern city dwellers know when an apple is truly in season? With refrigeration, apples are in supermarkets all year round.
How many office workers truly experience the seasons? How many of the daylight hours do they spend outdoors in the elements, experiencing the subtle (or dramatic) changes in Nature around them? The air is artificially regulated in their offices. Heating up? Cooling on? Is this as much awareness as they have of the seasons?
Mechanisation has driven people off the land. Most of our population lives in cities these days. Most of us couldn’t endure the tough conditions under which Van Gogh’s peasants toiled. But that is beside the point. Van Gogh’s message is about the deep spiritual connection to the land and cycle of life. The Australian aboriginals’ relationship to country is another form of this.
When I once asked a Chinese Taoist Professor why it was easier to meditate in the country than the city he replied: “there is country Nature and there is city Nature”. Will our younger generations ever (even temporarily) relinquish their screens and indoor habitats to get out , tune into country and city Nature to truly appreciate what Vincent Van Gogh’s work is showing us?
Van Gogh and the Seasons runs from 28 April – 9 July, 2017
Tickets are on sale now from National Gallery of Victoria, International 180 St. Kilda Rd, Melbourne, Australia.
Adult $28 / Concession $24.50 / Child $10 / Family (2 adults, 3 children) $65
By Magda de la Pesca 28 April, 2017
