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Thursday 3 February 2022

Artlyst: Van Gogh. Self-Portraits - The Infinite And The Ordinary

My latest review for Artlyst is of Van Gogh. Self-Portraits at the Courtauld Gallery:

'In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote, ‘I’d like to paint men or women with that je ne sais quoi of the eternal, of which the halo used to be the symbol, and which we try to achieve through the radiance itself, through the vibrancy of our colourations.’

Van Gogh’s self-portraits have often been (mis)interpreted in terms of his troubled life story instead of paying attention to what he says about them in his letters. Van Gogh. Self-Portraits reconsider this aspect of his work and place his self-representation in context to reveal the role it plays in his oeuvre. Amazingly, this is the first time that the entire span of Van Gogh’s self-portraiture has been explored in an exhibition; all the way from his early Self-Portrait with a Dark Felt Hat, created in 1886 during his formative period in Paris, to Self-Portrait with a Palette, painted at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in September 1889, one of his last self-portraits before his death in 1890. What we find is the radiance of the eternal in the vibrancy of colour.'

For more on Van Gogh see my Artlyst piece Van Gogh’s Religious Journey Around London.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

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The Innocence Mission - You Chase The Light.
Posted by Jonathan Evens at 21:04
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