Studio of the South

Christian Century, Jan 16, 2002 by Suzanne E. Hoefaerkamp

THE THRONGS of people viewing the Chicago Art Institute's exhibit on Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin moved through the rooms in intense silence, their faces serene and glowing, captivated by images that, it seemed to me, were addressing each of them personally. I had the sense that the people in the crowd, despite their anonymity, were unified by their experience of great art.

The Chicago exhibit "Studio of the South," 11 years in the making, focuses on how these two highly creative artists were brought into conversation and, for a time, led to live and work together in Arles, in the south of France. The exhibit, which moves to Amsterdam this month, reveals that Van Gogh and Gauguin's dialogue, and the artistic partnership that ensued, determined the direction of their lives and work, and the distinctive nature of their spiritual vision.

Van Gogh and Gauguin came from widely different backgrounds, yet certain aspects of their histories were remarkably similar. Both were largely self-taught and chose to be artists rather late in life. Both suffered occupational failures and personal setbacks. Through art they aspired to improve their lot, embark on a spiritual quest and discover a visual language that addressed the truth of their times. A part of this truth was that 19th-century ideas of progress linked with industrialization had not delivered all that they had promised. In response to this disillusionment, Van Gogh and Gauguin professed a vision of art as a source of hope. They committed themselves to creating a new and more deeply spiritual art.

According to the narrative accompanying the exhibition, by the time of the artists' first encounter, Van Gogh had already arrived at a distinct sense of purpose. He thought of his artistic undertaking as a spiritual journey. The widely traveled Gauguin had yet to discover his creative goals. Before the two began their 1888 experiment of sharing a studio and living space, they had already exchanged paintings and ideas, both in conversation and through eight months of correspondence.

Van Gogh had long harbored the idea of creating a community where artists could work together and help one another spiritually and financially. Assuming a missionary role for art, Van Gogh hoped that artists could be a source of consolation and hope in a troubled world. He imagined these dreams being fulfilled in Arles.

But both men had strong temperaments, and different approaches to painting. Almost immediately they started arguing about whether one should paint quickly, as Van Gogh did, or more slowly and deliberately, as Gauguin did; whether one should work on the spot or in the studio; and whether one should depict an actual subject or paint from the imagination. Their experiment in community living lasted only nine weeks. Nevertheless, those nine weeks in the studio of the south proved critical to the development of each artist's work, identity and destiny.

Van Gogh's pilgrimage was shaped by his early religious formation and by Dutch culture. His parents, Pastor Theodorus Vincent van Gogh and Anna van Gogh-Carbentus, followed the principles of a reform movement within the Dutch Reformed Church called the Groningen School, which advocated a Christo-centric piety of experience practiced as faith active in love. Though he eventually abandoned the religion of his parents, Van Gogh remained a deeply religious person. "That [rejection] does not keep me from having a terrible need of--shall I say the word--religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars."

As his painting The Starry Night attests, he encountered nature with a distinctively spiritual mode of perception. "I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand," Van Gogh declared. Giving preeminence to the natural world, he focused on its vitality.

The narrative accompanying the exhibit tends to minimize Van Gogh's attachment to his father's religious beliefs, as if Vincent, in turning to art, had altogether abandoned them. In reality, he did not discredit the Bible. Instead, he believed that modern literature was a good resource to supplement Bible reading. Van Gogh's enduring aim was to create an art of spiritual consolation.

Gauguin's life was more worldly. Enlisted in the merchant marine, he sailed the world as a youth. His spirituality encompassed nature, but with a decided focus on inner experience. He believed that the artist should "extract from nature while dreaming before it, interpreting it and deepening its meaning through freely invented design and chromatics." Gauguin's style created an imaginative atmosphere that refers to a spiritual state rather than to the world of appearance. He fused reality with fiction, and found the richest source of ideas in his imagination.

Van Gogh saw in Gauguin's work a complex human poetry, a deep humanism of the kind he admired in the works of Rembrandt and Millet, and which was lacking in the works of his contemporaries. He himself was never comfortable working only from the imagination.