Let's begin!
You have probably noticed this image somewhere in this blog before. I saw this image instantly and wanted it to definitely feature on my blog. This art piece named Irises by the ever eluding Van Gogh, is one it very well known ones, staying along with his most famous Sunflowers, Poppies and Night Cafe.
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| Irises by Van Gogh |
As soon as I saw it, the painting popped out at me, I found it interesting and instantly began to think about what Van Gogh may have been thinking about while painting this.
Irises is special. Through this painting, I can see that Van Gogh is trying to tell me that he wants me to view the world through his eyes, I got this through his clever naiming of the painting.
Irises is also an important artefact that Van Gogh left behind. He painted it while he was at an asylum at Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy-de-Provence (This is in France) in the year before his death in 1980. As we all know asylums are for the crazy. The cra-zay. And people around Van Gogh - including his father - (Not his brother though. His brother in fact warned him that his father would submit him into one) believed that Van Gogh was surely going through that path. And Lo and behold... He ended up in one.
They say if your friends or the people round you are thieves, then you shall be a thief too. The same should've happened to Van Gogh. But I fail to believe this. How can a "crazy person" still be able to paint with such mastery? The answer isn't luck or "refound skill" (Don't give me none of that bs) but simply that he was at peace while painting Irises. Even though EVEN his father shunned him and doomed him to such a life around mentally ill people, he was still able to see serenity and be at peace with himself, shown this through the calming flowers at the front and we should be able to spot that he could see light and still be happy (Not fully - I'll explain why) through the inclusion of the sunflowers (?) or the yellow-coloured flowers. I think he wasn't fully happy, because if you put him in the position of the Sunflowers, they were at the back and slightly ignored while the blue ones which are calm and serene are at the front, which kind of tells us more about his father. We can see that his father and his neighbours didn't like the idea of anything NEW happening, such as the hallucinations and the fact that Van Gogh cut his ear earlier on and delusions that he was being poisoned and therefore they petitioned against him to close his house down.
This leads me to say that while Van Gogh was also painting Irises, we could see his happiness and brightness being pushed aside by the ideas of old and his sadness and confinement inside the asylum being exposed a bit more.
Now, I'm never going to get to know what he intended.
All I know is that Van Gogh is a genius and that he has imprinted his name as so. I guess I'll need to stumble along his art more and more, but to make it fair I'll spread it out to other artists and art forms... After all there is only so many paintings you can review on ONE artist.. ;D
However, this is my interpretation and I hope you enjoyed it and come back for more.
Remember to share this out guys! Hoping to post more for your enjoyment :D
Kigen Art Inc.
