Besides often being broke, Vincent had a strong compulsion in his final years to complete a painting every day. Sometimes he was forced to reuse canvas then. (Part of his final style too to get the paint on as fast as possible with large strokes.)
The problem was; he also used very thick impasto-style brushstrokes. With Oil Paint, this often takes a long time to dry (and leaves a physical texture which will be visible if you overpaint that).
Some of Van Gogh's paintings are so thick, that underneath an outer layer of dried paint, there's still liquid paint trapped underneath, which may not dry for another hundred years.
But yeah, he was known for re-using canvases, as were many impressionist and post-impressionist school painters.
Will this internal drying of the liquid paint affect the looks of the painting in any way? ie will the painting look different in 100 years than it does today, assuming it is kept perfectly preserved and untouched in the ideal environment?
No, but it can lead to trouble when the painting is re-framed or cleaned because any kind of manipulation of the canvas can crack the paint. This is specialist work (especially on paintings with this kind of value) so they're in good hands but the problem is much less pronounced with thinner layered paintings.
Over his life as an artist (bout 10 years) he produced on average a piece of work every 36 hours. 900 paintings and a ton of drawings and sketches. He was incredibly prolific and although he had no real training, he practiced constantly and studied relentlessly. 100% dedicated to the craft.
Van Gogh, well known for reusing canvases, you'd probably want to X-ray any of his paintings to see if there was anything underneath, or in this case on the reverse.
Interesting if they separate it and it becomes part of his body of work. I hope not to be judged by the discards of my work, I wonder if this should be an artist's right ?
If you are of sound mind and decide you don't want something you produced seen, destroy it irreversibly (burn, melt, shatter, degauss, whatever it takes. Don't leave it for others to destroy --often they ignore your will and then we see posthumous works come to light.
i think it is an established practice to research and publish "full work sets", including the archives of letters, notes, incomplete/preparational drawings, etc. of big artists, writers, etc. Whether the discards of your works would be worth of such an attention is up to you :)
Just a minor myth busting here. Vincent Van Gogh was absolutely well known and well liked as a painter while he was alive. He didn’t make a lot of money at it, and rich people didn’t fawn over his paintings, and he definitely suffered from mental illness before he committed suicide, but the myth that he was a failure as an artist during his life while he was alive is just that… a myth.
The guy is the GOAT and while he was alive… many… many… other artists also saw him that way. His contemporaries absolutely adored him, and even tried to emulate him. His work was known to be important during his life to even the most financially successful of painters.
I suppose if you limit the concept of “success” to how much money one earns in their life, then fine Van Gogh was not very financially successful, but he was monumentally successful and recognized as such during his life by the only real measure that matters: Impact.
This is why as a journalist or a writer, it is important to confirm “what you know” before committing it to a piece. If you don’t verify everything you risk perpetuating myths instead of realities.
This is further from the truth than the putative "myth" that you are attacking. He did gain some recognition from colleagues in the last 6 months of his life following a review by Albert Aurier at the beginning of 1890, but before that, he was very much cast out from the society of fellow artists in many contexts-- he was mocked for being odd by his classmates in Paris, even Gaugin needed essentially to be bribed to stay at the Yellow House (with his brother footing the bill, as always).
The irony is that the parent is stating a lot of inaccuracies or straight-up falsehoods, while ending with:
> This is why as a journalist or a writer, it is important to confirm “what you know” before committing it to a piece. If you don’t verify everything you risk perpetuating myths instead of realities.
I hazard to suggest the parent has not so much as read a biography of Van Gogh before posting such authoritative-sounding misinformation that is then silently edited to align with comments.
Isn't the trivia that he only sold one painting during his life (where I assume the definition of "sell" includes paid commissions), and it was to his brother? Are you saying that is true, but he was popular as an artist (just not successful financially as an artist)? Or is that bit of trivia also untrue?
Edit: It occurs to me that also implicit in this popular definition of "successful artist" is that the majority of other well known artists were financially successful via their art, but I don't know if that's even true!
Edit: The parent was edited after I made this comment to be more explicit about financial success vs reputational success.
History is full of artists (whether painters, musicians, writers, etc.) who were known and respected by their peers, but failed to get much traction with the general public, and particularly with people who would pay money for their work, during their lifetime.
I came across a video of him on a YouTube journey one time, and really respected his performance, but I completely forgot his name and never came across him again until now, to your point.
He might not have sold many paintings, but after he died by suicide Monet saw Irises (I think) and remarked something like "How can someone who paints with such joy be so sad". Selling art requires the right contacts, even today, and Vincent was unable to attract the right connections. If he had not shot himself, I think within a few years he would have been as famous as Monet.
His brother was a successful art dealer and helped Vincent out and believed in him, but wasn't able to get much traction with his work. He was pretty well connected in this way. However, he wasn't liked (Vincent) by many people and struggled to build valuable connections with other artists, etc. due to his awful personality, which was in large part due to his mental illness I'd assume.
His brothers wife (his brother died from syphilis shortly after him) ended up with all his work and believed in it too. She was able to impress other with it and held a large show featuring his work a few years after his death and this is how he came into prominence.
> Selling art requires the right contacts, even today
I was talking to a friend of mine who is a reasonably famous and financially successful modern impressionist painter about the market selling his oil paintings. It’s more than just the right contacts, the entire thing sounds more awful than used car sales, honestly. Lots of game playing, politics, back stabbing, and scamming. Just asking him what I figured would be a straightforward question of what kind of percentage commission galleries charge led to about on hour long conversation that I could barely follow.
The short version seemed to be that if you’re naive or trusting, you’re screwed.
Also although he had many friends in the art space, he had trouble getting along with most of them. He wanted to make an artist colony in southern France, but for the most part it just ended up being him and his one friend, and that one friend eventually left. It’s that kind of failure that brought loneliness and his feeling of isolation.
That one friend was Paul Gauguin - a famous painter who Van Gogh looked up to. The two artists lived and painted together in Arles for two months. They had “excessively electric” debates about art that they emerged from exhausted. When Van Gogh could sense that Gauguin was going to leave, they had a heated argument. That night Van Gogh had a psychotic episode and cut off his own ear with a razor blade. Gauguin left right afterwards.
Yes, but not non-destructively. This has been done to some paintings where the painting 'underneath' was considered to be far more valuable (either monetary or historically). Personally I think this should never be done but obviously opinions on such stuff differ.
When the chemical properties of overpaint and underlayer are close this can get extremely hairy, removal speeds of a few square centimeters per day are not unheard of, you need to patience of a monk for this sort of thing.
To also learn how the drawing was executed. Original sketches may underlay the final paint. Van Gogh was a rapid painter and didnt paint in stages that much. But someone like DaVinci who worked on the same painting for years, if not a decade, reveals various changes from original conception.
In addition to Xray there is hyperspectral imaging and fluorescent imaging. Hyperspectral photographs at many different optical colors and extra-optical light. That revealed some techniques of creating the Mona Lisa.
It's kind of depressing that art can be owned privately and stored away. If this was never donated to NGS then I doubt any private owners would have had it x-rayed and the self portrait would never have been discovered.
Most art is owned privately and stored away (as an investment). Most art that's owned in a museum is stored (and is "donated" to the museum by the private collector).
Also part of the problem is that art is fragile and showing say: a painting can degrade it, as light breaks up pigment. Even in storage, certainly paints/mediums change their physical characteristics. Many "hidden" paintings reveal themselves underneath the oils that make up the final painting as the medium becomes more transparent.
Maybe it should be more clear to the public if the idea that art isn't so much given to museums, rather that artwork is used as a speculative investment by a private party until such a time it makes financial sense to transfer it to a museum. There is also the fact that if one is powerful/influential, you can influence the value of the artwork just by owning it and keeping it out of circulation. The whole private buying and selling of the artwork from gallery owners to auction houses works to raise the value of the artwork through hype, really.
It can be a hell of a grift.
van Gogh wasn't very good at playing that game, even when his brother was an art dealer - that's such a leg up and he blew that advantage. van Gogh isn't known to be all that easy to work with. Attempted murder doesn't help with this. We know him know since we celebrate his mental illness.
You make a number interesting points. FWIW I've been a printmaker for many years and know many artists "successful" and not.
Museums acquire work through purchase and donation, the ratio varies among museums and divisions within a museum. Several years ago a collector donated several thousand pieces to the major museum in my region. Fortunately a few of my pieces were included and are now part of the museum's "permanent collection".
Obviously museums prefer donations but only if the museum gets the kind of work they're seeking. It's a lot like academia, very competitive among curators to have the "right" high-valued work in the museum's possession.
And it's true that an artist's success is largely a marketing game. Artists who are good self-promoters will do the best. Those who aren't typically remain obscure. Of course success doesn't necessarily indicate artistic merit. That's often not decided until much later, like 50 or 100 years down the road.
Conservation of work is a complex subject. Oil-based paint was the only real option from the 1400's until ~1960. Oil paint dries by polymerization of fatty acids, problem is it doesn't know when to quit.[0] A paint film continues to harden, eventually the film integrity fails and the paint flakes off the substrate (canvas, etc.). Oil paintings are very likely to require restoration after 100 years if not sooner.
Worth noting: unlike works on paper, oil paintings are less affected by light exposure. That's why museums often display paintings in brighter areas (200 lux) vs. drawings, prints, photos being exhibited in dimly lit galleries (50 lux).
Interestingly many great artists were lousy technicians. Da Vinci is said to have experimented with various additives to paint which affected stability. Fascinating subjects indeed, and certainly contribute to keeping conservators employed.
How would you suggest that artists get paid? Someone bought this painting from an artists, just as artists want you to do right now, so they can pay their bills. At what point would the painting be seized, from the buyer?
You're asking a lot of deep sounding questions, but at the end of the day they don't matter much.
Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel. The School of Athens was commissioned by Pope Julius II. You'll find that a massive number of famous art pieces were commissioned, and I don't think you'll find any serious people who think less of them because of it.
But isn't the - at least partially - purpose of art to be a critical mirror of society?
Art and the freedom of art have often been used to critise society.
Now if art becomes a product, where is the critical function of art? Critical art is part of healthy and diverse society, without we're one step closer to an orwellian utopia.
Again, you're getting too deep where you don't need to be. You say "if art becomes a product" while I'm showing you examples from 500 years ago where people were paid to create some of the most famous pieces of art in history.
You're tapping into a single category of art -- art that is critical of society -- as if that's the only purpose of art.
The purpose of and the person who commissioned the piece of art is just part of the context and history of the piece. It says nothing of its impact and importance.
> Isn't Art produced for money just another product?
Someone valuing art doesn't have to change the meaning or devalue the artistic merits of the art. Conversely, not allowing art to be private/bought doesn't increase the meaning or artistic merits of the art.
> What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art?
This doesn't have to happen. Artists often have works of love, and works of survival. And, is art still valid if it has more meaning, unintentionally or not, to the buyer than the artist? In the end, it's all personal interpretation. I think there's also value in an artist commissioning work, being able to help someone achieve what they can't by themselves.
In the end, artists need to eat, and, I believe, live a life that could fit some reasonable definition of "comfortable". If you remove the monetary aspect, doesn't this require that the state/society sponsor artists, almost certainly without merit or qualification, since anyone can produce meaningful art? If anyone can be an artists, at any time, wouldn't this have to extend to the whole population?
I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it would require a monumental shift in society, with either an "artist class" of citizens, who were treated better than the general public, something like UBI, to guarantee everyone can make their art for free, and most definitely tyranny, to remove the freedom from the artists, in doing what they wish with their art.
In a sense, inequality is also a potential source for art. Wealthy artists are less likely to critise their wealthy patrons.
Every member of a society should have the right and freedom to intellectually critise that society. So an artist class might just be as successful as an journalist class (that we already have since journalists do enjoy certain rights that other classes don't).
What is important, IMHO, is that we don't lose sight of the fact that art also has a critical role to play in society.
Research is done for some private sales, or for loans from private collections to public exhibitions. I can’t think of any specific examples that went as far as xraying though.
