Van Gogh as an Inspirational Figure for Artists

The topic I have chosen for this assignment is the animated film, Loving Vincent (2018). The film is made up entirely of oil paintings on canvas, with over one hundred painters that used the same artistic techniques and style as the post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. The artists painted the actors and the backgrounds in van Gogh’s style, which created an impeccable blend of vibrant and lively colours. It is centered on thirty of van Gogh’s most famous paintings, including Café Terrace at Night, Starry Night, and Portrait of Dr. Gachet. This is the first full painted animated film and was directed and written by Polish filmmaker Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman. The plot of the film takes place 1 year after van Gogh’s death and is structured as a murder-mystery. It encompasses Vincent van Gogh’s life as a painter, specifically the circumstances of his death and the events that preceded it. The journey of Loving Vincent starts in 1891 in Arles, France. Armand Roulin, under his father’s orders and one of the many real-life subjects Van Gogh used, sets out to deliver an unopened lost letter that Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, shortly before his death. Through his journey to deliver the letter, he encounters many people who had crossed paths with Vincent during his lifetime and discovers more about the artist.

When I saw the trailer for Loving Vincent, I was skeptical. I was concerned with how the film creators would portray his story, and how they might embellish his life while glorifying his mental illness and personal life. As the film continues, Roulin is fascinated by van Gogh’s life and becomes fixated with whether his death was a murder or a suicide, for each person that he encounters has a dramatically different account of the genius painter. The major question within this film are the circumstances surrounding van Gogh’s death, especially due to him being in good spirits and cured by his doctor at the asylum six weeks before his death. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that these stories do not add to the mystery of his death but how these people such as Dr. Gachet, Adeline Ravoux, or the village folks understood his difficulties and troubles in life. The characters in this film are drawn directly from his paintings, each revealing something about his life. He did not have many friends, the people in his paintings are mostly people he met by necessity—his landlord, his barkeep, his doctor, his postman, prostitutes he knew, and other artists. I think this film specifically paints a portrait of how people perceive mental illness. In modern day society, van Gogh has been canonized as an artistic genius, however, during the 18th-19th century mental illness was minimized and detrimental to society, as it was seen as corrupt - regardless of gender.

Vincent van Gogh was stereotyped as a tortured artist that had the ability to transform his pain into artistic beauty and many people believed that his mental illness fed into his creativeness and thus allowed him to produce these beautiful works of art. It was as if his artistic talent was the result of poor mental health, or his so called “madness”, that produced such famous paintings. After Van Gogh’s suicide at the age of 37, his unconventional style was seen as a symptom of his illness, an it wasn’t until modern day that van Gogh has been seen more sympathetically as a hero who struggled against all odds to create his art. Van Gogh described experiencing ‘low spirits’ and ‘passions’ throughout his life. He also proclaimed he chose to dedicate his life to art and loneliness. He experienced extreme anxiety, memory loss, partial paralysis and he started hearing and seeing things. The idea that creativity was linked to the concept of madness was well known at this time, but Van Gogh rejected it he came to consider madness as an illness like any other. After his suicide many people framed van Gogh as a mad genius and reduced him to a product of mental health. It is evident that he is a great painter not because of poor mental health, as he did not allow it to stop him painting. Van Gogh’s story shows in Loving Vincent mental health does not and should not define who he is. There is a mythology around his mental illness that allows him to take on a quality of a legend through his artistic production. In the film some of the characters critiqued him as an unstable and unhinged man whereas others thought he was a martyr for art. These polarized views were prefixed by van Gogh as a mentally ill man, not him as an individual whose talent stemmed from himself separate of his illness. There were many opinions about van Gogh, but his passion for art and his struggle with mental illness was a way for him to communicate with people which is why his art connects so beautifully with society.

It can be said that van Gogh was not appreciated throughout his life until after death. This can be related to Linda Nochlins’s essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ and how institutional barriers and art education was taught in the nature of artistic genius focuses on how to approach studying art. Similar to van Gogh, women artists during this time were not glorified until after his death. Even though he was a man, he reflected the same story as many of these women artists did. Van Gogh did not come from an artistic background nor did he have the proper academic training to become an artist, he went against the grain of other male artist during that time and drew his inspiration from his emotions to convey the content in his paintings rather than the traditional artistic foundations. It can be noted from Nochlin’s essay that the women were suppressed in many spheres of society, including art, and women with artistic abilities are not a defining factor in why there haven't been recognized but, rather institutional, societal and economic inequalities and discrimination. Women simply did not have the same access and resources as the men did in order to artistically excel and develop, similarity to van Gogh and the discrimination he faced with his mental illness. Although Nochlin states that mythology should be ignored, many artists such as van Gogh drew a lot of influence from their background and upbringing within their work. Van Gogh’s inspiring narrative and his struggle with mental instability was framed in connection to his artistic work. Through her writing, Nochlin was instrumental in changing the language that surrounds the way we speak of artistic development, paving the way for many of those outside the norm, not just women, to find success as artists.

People regarded Vincent van Gogh as an artistic genius. However, in the film van Gogh was seen as an amateur that turned into an artist of influence. His “insanity” is significant to his biography, and as a result it sheds light on van Gogh’s life and personal psyche and the effect it had upon his art. After his death van Gogh was seen as mysterious and his mental illness added to his art which allowed him to breathe life into his art work through every brush stroke. His paintings are highly romanticized, and unveils a combination of vibrant, vivid, lively colours, and whimsical style, much liked in this film, Loving Vincent. I believe that both his artistic abilities and his mental illness made him worthy of public attention, however, it raises the question, if he was a female would he have gained the same recognition, or would he have been casted away like many female artists before him? It is evident that his illness bolstered his recognition as a renounced impressionist artist. The film embodies Vincent van Gogh’s life’s work and adds a sense of motion to them, the movement and emotion in van Gogh’s art has transcended time art and culture the film shows his life within his paintings and how it captures the style changes that represented the changes in his life. In conclusion, Vincent van Gogh’s art and this film is shaped by many artists that understood and admired van Gogh as an artist, as well as many people that understood distinctively how van Gogh’s art made him human and inspirational.