Van Gogh's Bedroom: Painting's reproductions in danger

These details of Van Gogh's bedroom, and the Bible of his "L'Arlesienne, this post, are great examples of the way reproductions by internet could give a more accurate notion of how a painting is seen in reality.

Unfortunately these are rare even thou now people go to museums with cameras but they prefer taking a picture of themselves next to their favorite or most famous paintings they find.

When only paper was available and a single picture of a painting was published in different books there was always a great disappointment in front of the real canvas. I felt fulled.

When I saw this version of Van Gogh's bedroom for the first time I questioned everything I knew about all the artists I had never saw at least five original works.

I could never imagine that the brushstrokes were that sick and he used impasto.

I could not take my eyes from the pillows and, sorry conservation team, I touched the left pillow because I simply could not restrain this impulse.

What I'm witnessing now is a degradation of images of paintings.

There are several sites selling famous masterpieces by repainting them and they are found at search engineers as the first answers if one looks for an artist.

People are publishing these paintings as originals over blogs because they rush to publish the first picture without reading they are fake and has little to do with the original. Usually the colors are different or brighten to make it more appealing giving that plastic flower effect on the table instead of the real one.

It is getting harder and harder to find a good reproduction over the www.

Most museums, I thought they would promote their masterpieces through the web, are not helping publishing good images and are more interested in using interactive experiences that only change angles in a suspicious 3D environments, or other kind of interaction.

In same cases, they don't publish 10% of what they have and are always inviting us to go to their next exhibition even though we are at the other side of the ocean.

For the moment I'll watch these two Bedroom's details: look that, as he said in a letter to Theo, he uses green at the pillows and a little bit of white.

The Good Samaritan by Delacroix and Van Gogh

Right: The Good Samaritan, 1890, by Van Gogh

Left: The Good Samaritan, 1849, by Eugène Delacroix

I have already published some of the Van Gogh paintings that were inspired by other artists and this is

another of these great achievements Vincent left. He also painted after Delacroix here.

It is a great way to see the impressionist changes in the way artists depict space, light and realize that they have other intentions than their predecessors.

The paintings are only forty one years apart. Some might think that Delacroix is more realistic

or more faithful or more anything but art's function is not portraying reality the closest possible and if

it was for that some restrictions would also be necessary to Delacroix.

This is a discussion that has been around since the ancient Greeks and it will be in one post.

Keep tuned. :)

Van Gogh's Breton Women after Émile Bernard

Right: Breton Women in a Meadow, 1888, by Emile Bernard

Left: Breton Women in the Plain of Pont-Aven _after Émile Bernard_, 1888, Van Gogh

Van Gogh painted after some paintings as it is shown here and here.

He also painted two or more versions of his own work as pointed out at these two paintings of Père Tanguy portrait.

I just found Breton women he did after Émile Bonard and felt like sharing.

There are lots of Van Gogh paintings at the WEB that I have never seen and this is one of the bright sides of the internet.

David Hockney, Homage to Van Gogh and wisps

Left: Homage to Van Gogh, 1988.

Right: Moving wisps. 1995.

It is a party of colors. The right is at a private collection and I feel very sad that such a great painting, that makes our eyes move to one texture to another, is not available to the public.

In the left Hockney homages Van Gogh by recreating the artist famous chair "Chair and Pipe" done in 1888 a century ago. I will do a post about how this chair became part of Van Gogh's iconography.

I created a label for David Hockney because he has been coming here many times.

Van Gogh's La Pietà after Eugene Delacroix

Right: La Pietà by Eugene Delacroix, 1850.

Left: Van Gogh's La Pietà after Delacroix, 1889.

While Van Gogh was at the hospital in Saint-Rémy he kept painting and he had a lithograph of Delacroix's painting that he used as model.

Van Gogh seldom used biblical themes thou he wanted to be a pastor during his youth following his father.

“I am not indifferent, and pious thoughts often console me in my suffering.” he wrote to Theo, his brother.

This is how he describes Delacroix's Pietà:

"The Delacroix is a "Pietà" that is to say the dead Christ with the Mater Dolorosa. The exhausted corpse lies on the ground in the entrance of a cave, the hands held before it on the left side, and the woman is behind it. It is in the evening after a thunderstorm, and that forlorn figure in blue clothes - the loose clothes are agitated by the wind - is sharply outlined against a sky in which violet clouds with golden edges are floating. She too stretches out her empty arms before her in a large gesture of despair, and one sees the good sturdy hands of a working woman. The shape of the figure with its streaming clothes is nearly as broad as it is high. And the face of the dead man is in the shadow - but the pale head of the woman stands out clearly against a cloud - a contrast which causes those two heads to seem like one somber-hued flower and one pale flower, arranged in such a way as mutually to intensify the effect."

Looking at the two paintings side by side is amazing.