Amsterdammers love their Vincent Van Gogh. They’ve built this huge expensive museum to his memory where they show some of his paintings, and of course the gift shop has everything Van Gogh, like purses, scarves, plates, cups … you get the picture. It is a real industry.
He is famous for a number of good reasons. He learned to paint late in life and mastered a normal painting style, painting Dutch peasant farm families in a dark pallet and didn’t use bright colours. But then he moved to Arles in the south of France and saw the light, so to speak. That’s where he created the style he is now famous for. When you look at “Sunflowers” or “Stary Night”, it is distinctively his style. His paintings now fetch millions at auctions, and his fame has solidified, as has his style.
For all those reasons, I find this picture here amazing. Just before you go into the rooms where his paintings hang, there is a lobby with about six big TV screens joined together cycling through Van Goghish images. One is a Van Gogh self portrait, with an easel in the background, but he is holding an iPhone, taking a selfie. Another is a painting of Joni Mitchell, as Van Gogh with a bandage around her head, covering a supposedly severed ear. There are more, but you get the picture.
This one however was the most interesting of the group. We have a “Starry Night” background, we have Vincent in an iconic Steve Jobs, black, turtle neck sweater, holding up an iPad, as Steve did when he first introduced it as his latest new product, and it shows Vincent’s famous masterpiece, a Vase of Sunflowers on the screen, all undoubtedly in the Van Gogh style.
In some ways, you might think that this is a bastardization of Van Gogh’s style and vision. In some ways, you could expect Amsterdammers to be up in arms, about the stealing of their favourite son’s ideas and techniques; an appropriation of their cultural heritage.
Luckily for us though, the Amsterdammers are generous, they don’t mind sharing, but even more, they don’t mind making money from their favourite son.
Actually Vincent van Gogh came from a little village near the Belgian border called Zundert that dates back to the middle ages. It lies about half way between Amsterdam and Brussels in the province of Noord Brabant where our family comes from too. He could almost not have been a Dutchman at all but a Belgian! That the Amsterdamers want to claim him is nevertheless not a surprise. The idea to portray him as a Steve Jobs is very interesting! But what about Joni Mitchell? Was she Dutch too? Or why did they choose her for the picture with the bandaged ear?
Actually, she painted it herself in 1994 for the album cover of her 15th album “Turbulent Indigo”, I guess it fit in well with the other images they were showing.
Thank you Ted. Interesting article.