Of Cypresses And Sunflowers

OF CYPRESSES AND SUNFLOWERS

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JOHN A. WALKER (COPYRIGHT 2009)

French poster for Lust for Life film with Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Those who know and admire the art of Vincent Van Gogh usually cringe whenever films and TV programmes about him appear because his work - the very thing he is supposedly famous for - tends to play second fiddle to the portrayal of the man and the saga of his life. This applies not only to obvious bio-pics such as Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956) and Robert Altman's Vincent & Theo (1990), but also to documentaries such as Alain Resnais' Van Gogh (1948), and films blending dramatisation and documentary such as Mai Zetterling's Vincent the Dutchman (1972, with Michael Gough as Van Gogh) and Paul Cox's Vincent (1987). Most filmmakers treat Van Gogh's images as keys to his personality and as illustrations of his life story. A depiction of a writhing cypress is thus taken as an expression of violent emotion rather than an objective record of the effect of the Mistral. Resnais' black-

and-white film featured only Vincent's canvases, but the artist's personal crisis was inscribed in the images on screen by means of accelerated montage. Only the Open University's educational TV programme The Potato Eaters (1983), gave priority to the work of art and its socio-historical context rather than to the artist's psyche and biography. A recurrent problem of movies about artists is how to represent their artworks. Often there are difficulties regarding copyright and access. How many viewers, one wonders, realise that the completed and half-completed 'Van Goghs' we see in these films are copies? In the case of Vincent, confusion was only too likely because it included real and fake Van Goghs. For Lust for Life, two hundred enlarged colour photos were used to represent Vincent's completed canvases; these were supplemented by copies executed by Robert Parker, an American art teacher. When contemplating Van Gogh's pictures we enter his world in our imaginations. Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) contains an episode in which a Japanese art student is enabled, courtesy of elaborate sets and special effects, literally to enter some of his paintings. (Kurosawa once wanted to be an artist, so this episode reflects a personal memory.) The way in which the film oscillates between photographic naturalism and the huge painted-scenery effect of the Van Gogh images is at first astonishing, but disappointment follows when one realises that the 'Van Goghs' shown are not the genuine ones but crude imitations. Altman's Vincent & Theo is a slow-motion, low-key version of Lust for Life. Some scenes in these two films are virtually identical. Where they differ is that Altman's movie is franker about the sexual diseases the brothers suffered from, and pays far

more attention to Theo and to the financial dimension of art practice. (It seems obligatory now to start a film about Van Gogh with shots of one of his canvases being sold for a huge sum.) While preparing for Lust for Life, Kirk Douglas practised painting crows many times so that he could give a passable imitation of Van Gogh at work. In contrast, Tim Roth, the actor who plays Vincent in Altman's film, is completely unconvincing when he applies brush to canvas.

Front cover of Monthly Film Bulletin, which contains several articles on films about Van Gogh. Cover images shows Tim Roth as the painter in Vincent & Theo. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How worthwhile are films which turn artists' lives into soap operas? Given the condensations and distortions such portrayals inevitably involve (one would never guess from Roth's performance that Van Gogh was a voracious reader), viewers

would be far better advised to read the artist's letters. By their very nature, bio-pics can only pay perfunctory attention to such issues as the social determinants of art, artistic intentions, traditions, genres, techniques, the artist's training, stylistic influences, literary sources and aesthetic theories. Bio-pics about Van Gogh are primarily tributes to the arts of casting, make-up, costume and set design. Actors are dressed to resemble the people in his portraits. Rooms are reconstructed from the evidence of his pictures. The urban and rural places where he lived and worked become locations. The reality Van Gogh turned into two dimensions, the scenic artists turn back again into three. Since the images are so familiar to us, the people and sets inevitably generate a sense of the uncanny. Lust for Life - the novel and the movie - contributed to the cult and myth of Van Gogh which is so powerful today. Abraham Ségal's seventy-minute colour documentary Van Gogh ou la Revanche Ambiguë (Van Gogh or the Double-edged Triumph, 1989) is an examination of this cult. The film consists of scenes of the New York auction of Van Gogh's Irises, of the Van Gogh centenary celebrations in Arles, St. Rémy, Auvers and Amsterdam, interspersed with vox pop interviews with the people of Arles, a medical expert, Kirk Douglas, Johan Van Gogh, writers and artists obsessed with Van Gogh, and with readings from Artaud's famous essay claiming that Vincent was "suicided by society" . Ségal employs the recursive device of showing a scene or interview and then returning to it later on; by this means the various themes of the film are interwoven. As the film progresses, a number of ironic contrasts emerge: in his lifetime Van Gogh was unknown, now he is world famous; once he evoked

indifference or antagonism, now he is worshipped; he was poor and his pictures were valueless, now they are valued in tens of millions of dollars; he lived without the help of state institutions, now they fall over themselves to honour and incorporate him. When Kirk Douglas is asked about his contribution to the legend of Van Gogh, he disclaims responsibility - saying it was due to the man's genius - but shots of a bar at Auvers, with a large portrait of Douglas playing the part of the painter in Lust for Life on the wall, reveal how subsequent mass-culture simulations overlay and blend with the originals. Shots of the interior of Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum with his actual paintings on display serve as a corrective to the myth. They show that his canvases are quite modest in size and that they now appear low-key in colour compared to brightly coloured postcards and slides. Ségal spoils this effect by ending his film with a sequence of whole images of Van Gogh's paintings which, although intended presumably to return the viewer to the originals, makes them seem too lurid. Ségal’s documentary is an intelligent account of the Van Gogh cult but it is more description than analysis/critique. For instance, it shows a number of contemporary artists who apparently have nothing to say about the major issues and problems of the world today and are reduced to making paintings after Van Gogh or in response to his life and work. Ségal offers no critical evaluation of their work. Again, as in many other films and TV arts programmes, he points to the fact that vast sums are now paid for Van Gogh's work. But what response is expected to this from the audience? Are we supposed to be outraged by this information? What

exactly is the objection to such prices? As Ségal’s film shows, saleroom audiences delight in high prices, they applaud when bidding reaches fantastic figures. Only if one believes it is morally and politically wrong that certain people are extremely rich while others starve, wrong that the super-rich should be able to exploit the work of dead artists to become even richer, does it make sense to object to the millions being invested in art. Without such a perspective, films about the cult of artists and the machinations of the art market are somewhat futile. While the cinema audience has little power to change the social circumstances which have given rise to the Van Gogh cult, and which continue to fuel it, personal liberation from it begins with a critique of the cult itself. The next step is to combine present-day aesthetic appreciation of Van Gogh's works with a deeper knowledge of their historical origin. (This is necessary because of the double existence - past and present - of Van Gogh's works.) Such knowledge is available via the agency of the social history of art. The advances in this field in recent decades - in particular, the scholarly writings of Griselda Pollock - have been ignored by film-makers attracted to the subject of Van Gogh. Pollock's most recent research considers the Van Gogh cult historically and seeks to identify the reasons for it in terms of the character of the art itself, the sequence of major exhibitions, and so on. Because its primary focus is the present, Ségal's documentary fails to provide a comparable historical analysis. Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract and The Belly of an Architect prove it is possible to make perceptive films about the visual arts that also succeed as cinema. At the moment, Greenaway seems the only director equipped to make an intellectually challenging movie about Vincent Van Gogh.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This article first appeared in the magazine Monthly Film Bulletin, vol 57, no 678, July 1990, pp. 184-85. John A. Walker is a painter and art historian. He is the author of the books Van Gogh Studies (London: JAW Publications, 1981) and Art and Artists on Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) plus periodical articles on Van Gogh and films about art. He is also an editorial advisor for the website: "http://www.artdesigncafe.com">www.artdesigncafe.com