He never really mastered figure drawing or perspective. His work was perhaps the better for it: that rawness giving leeway for the expression of intense feeling.
If you look at his drawings and sketches you can see he mastered realistic figure drawing and perspective pretty well. His weird perspectives and figures in the later paintings is clearly an artistic choice, not lack of basic drawing ability.
It's beautiful, but all those people are such a distraction. How about drones flying around with paintball guns and ink jet arms that spray brushstrokes of colorful paint all over everyone, so they look like part of the painting?
When I visited the exhibition in Kalmar Castle in Sweden at some undefined time ago it was calm and quiet and people sat on the floor or on little chairs.
Well, i went to an Andy Warhol exhibition in Cologne and saw some early sketches done by him. I was thoroughly unimpressed.
His later works were in a totally different league.
Sketches are not meant to be impressive. They are meant to be learning or figuring out experience. That is the whole point of sketch - to not make worked piece.
I'm specifically referring to the phenomenon that certain artists get lifted to semi-god status where even the sketch of a football on a restaurant napkin suddenly becomes news-worthy.
"Hey, take a look at these sketches."
"Nice. Seems like the typical sketches of an arts student."
"But these are by Van Gogh."
"Oh. My. GOOOD!"
Well, obviously I'm exaggerating for dramatic purposes but my general point should become clear. The man was an outstanding artist, no question about it. But that does not mean that every single thing he did, every careless sketch he jotted down for who-knows-what purpose needs to be met with stunned adoration.
When it's not about the artistic merit of the sketches but purely the fact that they were drawn by Van Gogh, then the focus is not the art but the artist. That, in my opinion, qualifies as "fanboy-ism" although, of course, I chose this term also in parts for its controversial connotation.
Given his status in the history of art, there could be a second interesting aspect to such a discovery: do these sketches tell us anything about Van Gogh's life that might be relevant and hasn't previously been known? I don't see that here, either.
Only 37 years old when he died and having only sold one painting, van Gogh sadly did not live long enough to see the extent of his legacy – which includes his works now being some of the most expensive in the world.
