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A 19th century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who remains one of the most influential artists in Western art. He lived the last three years of his life in Arles, in French Provence, where he produced the majority of his most famous work—about 200 paintings and 100 drawings—during just 15 months. After a series of eye-opening encounters with the work of writers and other painters, van Gogh became convinced that he could portray the South of France in a way that no previous artist had before, and, accordingly, teach people to see the region in an entirely new light. Although van Gogh abandoned the classical ideal that painting should “render on canvas an accurate version of the visual world,” Alain de Botton does not see this shift as a rejection of artistic realism but rather as a new, innovative form of it, one that foregrounded the colors and motion of Provence’s landscape—which van Gogh took as its true essence—rather than its proportions and lines. A series of plaques in and around Arles memorialize van Gogh’s life and work, and in his seventh essay de Botton follows this “van Gogh trail” on a quest to see Provence’s beauty, which was previously hidden from him.
Vincent van Gogh Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Vincent van Gogh or refer to Vincent van Gogh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7
Quotes
Because we find places to be beautiful as immediately and apparently spontaneously as we find snow to be cold or sugar sweet, it is hard to imagine that there is anything we might do to alter or expand our attractions. It seems that matters have been decided for us by qualities inherent in the places themselves or by hardwiring in our psyches, and that we would therefore be as helpless to modify our sense of the places we find beautiful as we would our preference for the ice creams we find appetizing.
Yet aesthetic tastes may be less rigid than this analogy suggests. We overlook certain places because nothing has ever prompted us to conceive of them as being worthy of appreciation, or because some unfortunate but random association has turned us against them.
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It was for van Gogh the mark of every great painter to enable viewers to see certain aspects of the world more clearly.
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‘Completely true to nature!’—what a lie:
How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?
The smallest bit of nature is infinite!
And so he paints what he likes about it.
And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!
Nietzsche 188
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A few years after van Gogh’s stay in Provence, Oscar Wilde remarked that there had been no fog in London before Whistler painted it. Surely, too, there were fewer cypresses in Provence before van Gogh painted them.
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Vincent van Gogh Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Vincent van Gogh or refer to Vincent van Gogh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7
Quotes
Because we find places to be beautiful as immediately and apparently spontaneously as we find snow to be cold or sugar sweet, it is hard to imagine that there is anything we might do to alter or expand our attractions. It seems that matters have been decided for us by qualities inherent in the places themselves or by hardwiring in our psyches, and that we would therefore be as helpless to modify our sense of the places we find beautiful as we would our preference for the ice creams we find appetizing.
Yet aesthetic tastes may be less rigid than this analogy suggests. We overlook certain places because nothing has ever prompted us to conceive of them as being worthy of appreciation, or because some unfortunate but random association has turned us against them.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It was for van Gogh the mark of every great painter to enable viewers to see certain aspects of the world more clearly.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
‘Completely true to nature!’—what a lie:
How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?
The smallest bit of nature is infinite!
And so he paints what he likes about it.
And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!
Nietzsche 188
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
A few years after van Gogh’s stay in Provence, Oscar Wilde remarked that there had been no fog in London before Whistler painted it. Surely, too, there were fewer cypresses in Provence before van Gogh painted them.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
