THE VAN GOGH BRAND

VAN GOGH IN BRITAIN AT THE TATE MODERN* 

So many people visited the Van Gogh exhibition that restitution had to be sought from the Arts Council for damage to the gallery flooring. That was in 1947, the last time London hosted a major Van Gogh exhibition.  The famous Dutch painter was, to put it mildly, a crowd puller.
And indeed no sooner had the current exhibition at Tate Britain opened than it sold out. Crowds queue to view the pictures then crowd into the galleries, seeking to get a reasonable view of the paintings amidst the milling mass of eager consumers. Until, as a woman stated standing close by to her friend, “these then are the famous sunflowers.  And indeed, they were, in all their glory, so that you could almost smell the pungent aroma coming from their dark hearts. The Van Gogh ‘brand’ encapsulated?
There is also, of course, the madness, the odd business with the ear, the melancholy of the self-portraits and more recently the accompanying song...
   
“Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now. Don McLean, Vincent.

We have inherited far more from the 19th-century Romantic tradition than is often acknowledged. Not least in the notion of the suffering and tormented artist, the poet dying young in a garret, the lovelorn composer and the ‘mad’ that is too sane, too insightful, painter. The image is attractive as drama and satisfies something that people seem to desire from art, a background of tragedy. Vincent Van Goth fits the bill perfectly. How healthy or truthful this image is, is another matter. For more great art is produced in spite of madness and its close companion alcoholism and drug addiction than because of it.
Still, it is the Don McLean image that sells tickets and fridge magnets, and I believe gets in the way of seeing Van Gogh’s work clearly, for he offers something truly original and unconstrained, a vision of such intensity and clarity that the glare can threaten to blind you, - this is as true of the blazing sunflowers as of the darkened hovel in which Dutch peasants eat potatoes. The first is an image of intense exploding beauty and energy, the second of grinding poverty and despair. Without wholly buying into the Van Gogh brand, it does not need much imagination to grasp that to experience both with equal intensity could take a toll.
I remember at eighteen seeing an incredibly beautiful girl cross the road just as a severely disabled man was being helped from an ambulance. Leaving to one side the prejudices of an eighteen-year-old, I experienced intensely, like a searing pain, the stark contrast between the life lived by this stunning young girl and the strangely misshapen man being helped down the ramp. The contrast was unbearable and, perhaps, identifying with the man in the wheelchair, I felt a wave of incomprehension and despair. I am no Van Gogh but if my experience was even close to his own I can understand that nausea produced could induce madness.  
But there is nothing remotely romantic or inspirational about bleak despair, it is a hand pushing your face back into the darkness, forcing you to drown. Creative activity only becomes possible when some, no matter how dim, light returns. Thus, in portraying despair you portray only an approximation if a painter an approximation capable of being understood and appreciated as a work of art. Thus, in the warmth of the gallery, we observe the bleak hovel in which the potato eaters dwell with coolly detached aestheticism. The despair is secondary to the art. It has become further removed from reality, it is an object of admiration, it is ‘art.’
Does any of this matter as we depart, carrier bag full of catalogues, posters, mass-produced reproductions and the ubiquitous fridge magnets? Well, it is certainly all too easy to adopt a censorious, and indeed rather pompous, tone, and perhaps I have already done so. However, I came away from the exhibition feeling that the man, the art, was being buried under the brand. As to the suffering that too has been branded, the tormented artist scenario with a Victorian edge to it.[1]   
As I say I feel the paintings emerged as much, despite the suffering he endured, as from it, however, there was obviously a connection. So was it worth it, all that torment was it worth a single painting? I leave the question hanging.

*UNTIL 11 AUGUST 2019


[1] Dickens, as you discover when you visit the exhibition, was one of his favourite English writers, whilst the popular black and white prints of the late Victorian period fascinated him. Though I must confess that the Van Gogh and Britain theme, he only experienced London, was somewhat overstretched. Still I guess it proved a useful hook on which to hang an important exhibition

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