Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Van Gogh in Murray Hill
From Bill Richards, concerning a very fine local art exhibit: Our neighbor The Morgan Libray has an amazing exhibit of Letters, Paintings and Drawings of Van Gogh. The Letters are to Emile Bernard a friend of Van Gogh's and also of Toulouse-Latrec's and himself a painter. The art of letter writing has almost become a lost art. Yesterday I read Van Gogh's Letter Number VIII written the "Last Week of June 1888" - it begins, " It's fine that you're reading the bible." The letter goes on into a long discussion on religious painters like Delacroix, Rembrandt, Millet, Botticelli, van Eyck and Velasquez. He writes of Christ, " He lived a serene life, and was the greatest artist of all, disdianing marble, clay or colour, working with living flesh." I knew the Van Gogh could piant. Yesterday I learned that he could write. Don't miss this wonderful exhibition which closes in Mid January 2008.
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it's unusual for artists of any calibre to be able to communicate equally well in more than one medium. i had learned from my father (an artist and writer) that one has to sacrifice many things in order to be immersed entirely into your chosen communication medium -- the "jack of all trades is the master of none" idea. but some geniuses perhaps have too important a message to convey, and so are (natural) masters of several communication conduits. in turn, that genius inspires others to receive or find the message, or perhaps awakens the message within them. i find autodidacts and "true geniuses" really intriguing for this reason: what are they saying ... and perhaps where did the message come from, without training or comprehension. alas, i am not a genuis, but i am blessed for having received the messages carried by many of them -- whether profound or trivial, all are important and resonate on different and many levels.
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