Van Gogh Museum Journal 2003

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[Van Gogh-Gauguin Symposium]

Introduction
Chris Stolwijk

For many people, the life and work of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin continues to hold an enormous fascination. This became more than evident when the exhibition Van Gogh-Gauguin: the Studio of the South attracted huge crowds. Following years of intensive preparation and close cooperation with The Art Institute of Chicago, the show ran in Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum from 9 February to 2 June 2002. The exhibition examined around 120 works by these artists, and reconstructed the complex rivalry that existed between two of the most influential painters of the last decades of the 19th century. In the accompanying catalogue, Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zeegers describe in minute detail the early history of this relationship, the artists' mutual admiration, the brief but significant months when they worked together in the ‘Studio of the South,’ and the subsequent period when they each went their own way.

The art-historical research carried out in preparation for the exhibition and the catalogue forms part of a long tradition. With an eye to establishing the current state of research on these two artists, and also to opening up new fields of study, the Van Gogh Museum organised an international symposium entitled Van Gogh-Gauguin, which was held from 7-9 March 2002. Douglas W. Druick gave the introductory keynote address. He recalled in detail the many approaches taken in the past by scholars working on Van Gogh and Gauguin. Despite their great diversity, he considers that ‘different views of the Van Gogh-Gauguin relationship can in a sense be superimposed, seen through each other to produce a more complex, three-dimensional picture of the ways in which individual and idiosyncratic particulars inflect broader artistic and cultural shaping forces, and vice-versa.’ Another feature of the symposium was the opportunity it offered the public to exchange ideas with the exhibition curators; during the session Displaying Van Gogh and Gauguin people could express their views on the design and presentation of the show at the two venues, Chicago and Amsterdam. However, the majority of time was devoted to the sessions dealing with four key areas, which the organisers considered to be primary in current research.

Conservation occupied a prominent position. The contributions discussing the alteration of colour relationships in Van Gogh's paintings (Ann Hoeningswald), the technical research into a number of Gauguin's works in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Charlotte Hale), the wealth of new technical information recent research has revealed concerning Van Gogh's Antwerp and Paris paintings (Ella Hendriks), and new light on Van Gogh's use of tracings (Kristin Lister) showed once again most convincingly that technical research can, and will continue to, provide us with invaluable information and insights. Clearly, the field benefits considerably from a close cooperation between restorers, conservators and academics.

Over the past years questions of authenticity have strongly coloured the art-historical debate around Van Gogh, and to a lesser extent, Gauguin. In their lectures during the session on Authenticity, Vojtĕch Jirat-Wasiutyński and Louis van Tilborgh posed several such often-pressing questions in an historical perspective, and intimated the difficulties arising for both the researcher and the public when ascribing works to either Gauguin or Van Gogh - or rejecting them. Some time was also spent on a public debate about the authenticity of the Sunflowers (F 457 JH 1666).

The lectures that formed part of the series Current views on Van Gogh and Gauguin were also multifaceted, both in terms of content and approach. Using a wealth of press reviews and art literature, Isabelle Cahn outlined the reception of Gauguin's work in France in the years 1905-49. At the time of his death, the artist was as good as forgotten, only to be completely rehabilitated a few decades later.

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With an approach combining art history and the history of ideas, Debora Silverman investigated the two artists' ‘religious modernism.’ In her view, while in Arles Van Gogh absorbed and as it were processed the brilliant colours and Roman Catholic culture of Provence, making use of his own craft labour and Protestant humanism to create a kind of ‘sacred realism.’ For Gauguin, on the other hand, brought up a Catholic, art was an abstraction, which was to set people free from everyday reality and offer a glimpse of the divine. Belinda Thomson, using a large quantity of source material, reconstructed the period that Gauguin and Robert Louis Stevenson spent in the South Pacific. Although it remains unclear whether Gauguin was familiar with Stevenson's work, the latter's realistic, modern vision of Pacific life, written from a Eurocentric perspective and rich in humour and irony, offers a vital and vibrant context within which to approach Gauguin's Tahitian work, which is packed with a cultivated mystique and obscured meanings. Fred Leeman based his lecture on a combination of art-historical comparisons, (new) archival information and first-person documents (letters, diaries, etc.) and presented a new interpretation of the influence of Emile Bernard's work on that of Van Gogh and Gauguin in 1888. According to Leeman, this influence was considerably more profound and far-reaching than has so far been assumed in the art-historical literature.

Both Van Gogh and Gauguin were prolific writers, although the former never intended that his letters be published. In fact, Van Gogh used his letters to explore and test out his ideas against those of others, including major painters and writers. In his lecture for the session The artist as a writer Wouter van der Veen suggested that Van Gogh had a literary mind, which to a large extent dominated his relationship with Gauguin. Van Gogh's (literary) imagination conceived the relationship as an artistic and harmonious one - but the reality was otherwise. Van Gogh wrote chiefly for his own account, while Gauguin, by contrast - as Elizabeth Childs explained in her lecture - had a definite audience in mind when he composed his various texts, an audience to whom he wished to present his art work in as favourable a light as possible.

There was a general consensus at the end of the symposium that the proceedings should be published. It was most unfortunate that some of the authors had previously committed their papers elsewhere, while others had no spare time. Silverman and Lister had already published their findings in the Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001.

The Editorial Board of the Van Gogh Museum Journal is delighted that six of the speakers were prepared to adapt their lectures for publication. The essays included in the present volume provide an excellent, clear picture of the multifaceted methods and themes characterising today's research into the life and work of Van Gogh and Gauguin. The successful and inspiring symposium Van Gogh-Gauguin thus receives a fitting conclusion and the desired sequel. The Board would like to thank the authors most warmly for their kind cooperation in this matter.