Van Gogh in Santa Barbara

The exhibition “Through Vincent’s Eyes” at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art disabused me of two long-held ideas about Van Gogh’s art: 1. That his style was a reaction to Impressionism, and 2. That he never painted a bad picture. Before I get into my critique, however, I should commend curator Eik Kahng and the SBMA staff for mounting such an ambitious show. Taking on Van Gogh, for starters, is quite a challenge. No museum is going to want to lend you its Van Gogh, and there aren’t extra VGs lying around in storage anywhere. His life and art have been researched, written about (and filmed) more than any other artist, and there is an entire museum in Amsterdam devoted solely to him. What more is there to say? On the flip side, his popularity, as evidenced recently by the VG Immersive experiences traversing the country, ensures attention and box office returns, almost regardless of what there is to say. Still, to present an exhibition with 20 original works by Van Gogh and 81 works by related artists from maybe 40 lenders is quite a feat (not to mention the complications caused by delays in the museum’s renovations and Covid).

Perhaps it is because I took a college course called “Impressionism and Post-Impressionism,” or because John Rewald famously wrote companion surveys of one, then the other, or perhaps because Cezanne famously said his aim was to “make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museums,”  I have always looked at Van Gogh, along with Gauguin, Seurat, Cezanne, et al., as reacting against the airy, light spontaneity of Impressionism. This show instead, other than a fleeting reference here and there to Monet, makes the point that VG did not see the Impressionist exhibitions and was not part of their circle. Rather, he directly followed the tradition of 19th-century Realism, looking to Millet above all, but also such painters of day laborers and the down-and-out as Raffaelli, Breton, Bonvin and Israels. And as for his style, Eik offers a wall of eight paintings by Adolphe Monticelli as a precursor to the heavy impasto of VG’s late period. Once VG moves past his Potato Eaters and on to France, I’m not sure how much of Millet’s influence remains; but the argument that he sidestepped Impressionism, while not totally convincing, was new to me and opened my eyes, even more, to VG’s originality.

As for my second revelation, I have always been amazed at how stunning, and pleasing, every work I’ve seen by VG was–oils, watercolors and drawings. There is a terribly ugly “Reclining Nude” at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, but for me that was the exception that proved the rule. Of the 20 VGs in this show, however, there are maybe ten that even want me to take a second look. One, “Vase of Poppies,” is downright unattractive, while another eight I would classify as “ordinary.” (The one VG that didn’t travel from Columbus, “Adeline Ravoux,” is also not to my taste.) In a way, that suits the exhibition, for many of the VGs do not stand out from the surrounding works by lesser artists and you can see him better in this context. The point of the exhibition, after all, is not to prove that VG was a great artist, or even a great innovator, but to show the late 19th-century milieu that created him and that he was a part of.

Beyond the pedagogical point, any art exhibition stands or falls on the quality (or interest) of the works it presents. By this measure, TVE is something less than a blockbuster. Out of 60 non-VG paintings, these are the ones that stopped me in my tracks:
Bastien-Lepage, *The Ripened Wheat, 1884
Boudin, *Camaret, Boats in the Harbor, 1871-73.
Chardin, Still Life with a Leg of Lamb, 1730   (Houston)
Corot, *The Glacis of a Ruined Castle-Fort, 1855-65
Fantin-Latour, *Chrysanthemums of Summer, 1887.
Jongkind, *The Cathedral of Notre-Dame, 1849.
Manet, Peonies, 1864-65.  (New York, Met)
Raffaelli, The Absinthe Drinkers, 1881 (Chicago)
Rousseau, *Valley of Saint-Ferjeux, c. 1860
Sisley, *Saint-Mammes, 1885

Works with an asterisk (70%) are from Santa Barbara’s own collection, so we didn’t need this show to see them. Of the other three, neither the Chardin nor the Manet, lovely as they are, is a major work. It is only the Raffaelli that I would call a masterpiece and a surprise, the one revelation I will take from the exhibition. The lack of strong loans (and I would add Millet’s The Sower from the Carnegie as an important loan, even though the famous version is in Boston) points to the major shortcoming of Through Vincent’s Eyes. The works presented don’t necessarily support the thesis of the show or, when they do, aren’t the best examples. Yes, Courbet was an important progenitor of Realism in France, but you wouldn’t know that from the small Still Life with Apples, Pears and Pomegranates, 1871, on loan from Dallas. Yes, Delacroix was an important source for VG’s color, but it’s a stretch to look for that in the sketch of The Last Words of Marcus Aurelius or Winter: Juno and Aeolus, both in Santa Barbara. Too often, works seem to be in the exhibition only because they were available. Tim Eaton’s Still Life with Apples and Breton Crockery, 1892, by Emile Bernard is a lovely picture but not in the style admired by VG or found in the other Bernard from Houston. Pointillist works by Maximilien Luce and Hippolyte Petitjean from another local collection date from a half-decade after VG’s death and have little connection to his work, except as a road not taken. VG was a voluminous reader and writer of letters, and there is hardly an artist active in France in the 1880s that VG doesn’t mention at some point. That doesn’t mean their works are always relevant to VG’s art. At even more of a stretch, when there isn’t a direct reference the exhibition label will talk about how Vincent “would have admired” such-and-such if he’d seen it, or “would have” felt the same way. At the other extreme is a work with an actual close connection to VG, Scheffer’s Christus Consolator: he kept a print of it in his room during his religious period. It is, however, the single worst painting in the Minneapolis Institute of Art and was subsequently, and rightly, scorned by VG.

The wide range of Vincent’s interests and commentary provides an excuse for Santa Barbara to put on display almost every French painting in its collection from the late 19th century. I count 30 paintings from SBMA in the catalogue, another ten from Santa Barbara collections and probably another dozen from Los Angeles collectors. The more paintings we get to see, the merrier; but again, their presence often speaks more to availability than relevance or importance. As mentioned above, seven of my ten favorites are SBMA’s; and I love seeing the Boudin, Jongkind and Sisley, whatever their relevance. More exciting, perhaps, was discovering works in the collection that I had never seen before, including the Bastien-Lepage, Israels, Mauve and Troyon. On the other hand were a few works such as Duez’s Woman in Grey on Board Ship that called attention to themselves because they are always on display here and looked out of place in a VG show. VG did mention Monet in his letters to Theo, which sufficed as a cue for both SBMA and Columbus to include their Monets, whether or not the individual works were worthy. I was not familiar with View of Bennecourt, 1887, from Columbus; it struck me as a weak Cezanne. As for SBMA’s much better Waterloo Bridge, 1900, the label pointed out that VG also painted bridges.

Finally, what of the 20 works by Vincent himself? One, the “Harriman Roses,” as Mary Morton of the National Gallery calls it, is an absolute masterpiece, a stunningly beautiful painting that is on the cover of the museum newsletter and the back cover of the catalogue (the next best picture, Tarascon Stagecoach, is on the front). I could look at it all day and never get tired, and the more I looked, the more I saw. Van Gogh was at his absolute peak in May 1890. He applied paint thickly and quickly, with total confidence. If you look closely you see brown twigs that are unprimed canvas. I don’t know how he worked, but I can imagine him dashing this off in a day. The red of the roses has disappeared, but like Roman sculpture or Egyptian temples the resulting white may be even more pleasing to the modern eye. The three greens – of the leaves, the table top and the background – provide a wonderfully subtle contrast; and the slightly different directions of the wavy background lines give life and animation to the not-so-still still life.

Tarascon Stagecoach, as mentioned, is the other outstanding work. These are the two pieces that elevate the entire show, by reminding us of VG’s greatness. And what about this painting, from 1888, that is so remarkable and, therefore, a clue to VG’s preeminence? It is bold. The colors are bold, the lines are bold, the composition is bold. The stagecoach, colored with complementary red and green with large white wheels, is front-and-center, commanding attention. Colors are laid on in blocs (as in Japanese prints). Look at the sky. There is no aerial perspective; it is one mass of very bright blue. The visible brush strokes tell us this is paint on a flat surface–very modern. Look at the windows in the white walls: the farthest one is delineated, the nearer ones are merely hinted at. This is not realism, this is atmosphere in service to the coach, which holds our gaze.  Under and behind the coach is a flat, grey blob of shadow. It’s no more realistic than the shadow cast by the ladder at left. We feel the sun is casting shadows, we feel there are shadows there, we feel the power of the sunny day. (These shadows are no more realistic than the famous shadows in the Olive Trees at Mia.) This all gives me a hint of VG’s appeal: it is his boldness and his bending of reality to emotion, using color, broad strokes and contrasts.

Unfortunately, those qualities are largely absent in the other works on display. For instance, the major loan from Dallas, Sheaves of Wheat, 1890, is positively bland. There are practically only two colors–a light beige-yellow and a light aqua blue– creating the look of an overexposed photograph. The double-wide format weakens, rather than strengthens, the composition. We look in vain for something somewhere to happen. The dark green dabs of trees in the background don’t do it. The Wheatfield, 1888, from Honolulu is the other painting accorded center-stage treatment, probably because it reminds you of other, more famous works. It is surprisingly flat for a VG, with four straight horizontal lines and a horizontal row of clouds sucking energy out of the scene. The bright yellow announces Vincent’s arrival in Arles and introduces a gallery of landscapes, but the work is not in VG’s top 100 (or 200). Two years later Les Vessenots in Auvers, 1890, captures more magic, with diagonal lines dominant, a mysterious scumbled sky and a prominent blue pennant shape in the lower right that defies identification. The red roof in the upper middle adds a little spark, but the overall composition suffers from too much yellow-green. Compare this to Tarascon Stagecoach and it feels a bit squishy. I won’t run down the other paintings except to note that visitors looking at Bridge Across the Seine at Asnieres, 1887, one of two VGs from Larry Ellison, didn’t recognize it as a VG. Painted calmly, with minor color modulations and traditional perspective, it looked more like a minor Impressionist work.

My third favorite VG painting is Head of a Peasant Woman, 1884, from St. Louis. It is a whole different side of VG’s art, before he moved to France. It is simple and direct, with the white bonnet almost jumping off the canvas, which also has trouble holding the woman’s piercing eyes. If VG had painted nothing else I would consider him a great artist, although this gives little hint of all that was to come. A bit like a Gericault? Peasant Woman is in a gallery with drawings and prints, as well as a riveting Self-Portrait with Pipe, 1886, from Amsterdam, which leads me to an appreciation of the two great line drawings in the show, Marsh with Water Lilies, Etten, 1881, from Virginia, and The Langlois Bridge, 1888, from LACMA. His facility with pen and ink in 1881, when he was still very much an art student, is astonishing. His composition draws you in, so much more than a drawing of the same scene hanging next to it by Anthon van Rappard. It seems delicate, as well, until you look at The Langlois Bridge, where maximum information is conveyed with a minimum of strokes. Every touch of the reed pen invites, and rewards, attention. This guy is good!

After all is said and done, what sticks with me is the chance the exhibition gave me to look at so many artworks. Many, very many, weren’t great, but I appreciated the opportunity to measure their quality and become familiar with some less familiar names and paintings. I also got a more rounded view of Van Gogh’s career and was able to form my ideas about what makes a great Van Gogh, and what makes Van Gogh great.