A Bigger Message by Martin Gayford

Author:Martin Gayford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
Published: 2016-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

16

Van Gogh and the power of drawing

The event of early 2010 in the London art world – at least for those who love painting and drawing – was an exhibition at the Royal Academy entitled ‘The Real Van Gogh’. It was the most spectacular array of that supreme artist’s work ever to have been assembled and seen in Britain. I went to see the show several times, for pleasure, to review it and also because I was asked by the RA Magazine to interview three artists about their reaction to the exhibit. They were Jenny Saville, John Bellany and Hockney. Each of these painters saw something different in van Gogh, in each case – I think – something that was really there. Jenny Saville saw the frenzy of working in searing heat, as she had done for a number of years herself in Sicily, and also Vincent’s neuroticism:

He uses exaggeration – a classic narcissistic way of being, which would go with his illness. I would have thought he was bipolar. Obviously when it was very severe he couldn’t work, but his work is interrelated with his personality as a whole – not separate from his work at all. When van Gogh uses reflected light, say of the side of a jug, he exaggerates it. It’s like a hyperbole, and that is reflected on a wall, so everything – colour and light – vibrates within the picture.

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