“Loving Vincent”
The movie is produced by a Polish studio, consisting of 65 k oil paintings created by the artists recruited world wide. All the paintings are following Van Gogh’s style and paintings. The theme song is Don Mclean’s “starry starry night, paint your palette blue and grey…” Although the storyline is so simple, watching this movie is a must-do ceremony for all the Van Gogh’s fans.
I often fall for the first sight and then later figured out why. It is the case for Van Gogh. Initially, I was attracted by his “sunflower”, “starry night” and “bedroom at Arles”. I found these paintings are HIS. Then I even didn’t know the word “impressionism”. Later during middle/high schools, I read “the lust for life”, an excellent biography for Van Gogh by Irving Stone. There I had seen more prints of his works, portraits of farmers, coal miners, swirl strokes of skys and fields, self-portraits, shoes. After I came to US, I started seeing his works in person at Met, MOMA, Guggenheim, Smithsonian DC, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art @ Kansas City … yet waiting for visiting the Amsterdam Van Gogh’s museum. My bedroom hangs a collection of my favorite, among which, there are two prints from Van Gogh’s paintings, “first step” and “A Wheatfield with Cypresses (occasionally called A Cornfield with Cypresses)”
I especially like his late stage works like the ones above, and like the “wheat field with crows”. I can totally link his works to who he is and what he had said:
“Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum”
I can also totally understand a person who is so quiet all the time is actually full of passion and energy. He was very faithful to himself. He loves paintings and his brother Theo, so he went out painting every day and wrote to his brother Theo every day.
“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”
He said to his doctor Gachet who loves art but was too coward to pursue art fully “I lived in a truth struggled, but you lived in the lie”. Wisdom tells us “you admire what you don’t have” I wish one day I can be as courageous as you Vincent!