
Van Gogh’s Japanese Idyll - hecubus
https://hyperallergic.com/448018/inspiration-from-japan-van-gogh-museum-2018/
======
DanielleMolloy
The article missed showing the imho coolest of van Goghs Japan-inspired works,
"Père Tanguy":

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Père_Tanguy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Père_Tanguy)

[https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/père-
tanguy](https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/père-tanguy)

"Almond blossoms" is really beautiful, and indeed very reminiscent of cherry
blossoms. I like its bittersweet background story a lot.

~~~
extralego
At least it’s in the HN edition now! The Père Tanguy portrait is just
wonderful.

------
kazinator
> _Having never visited Japan, he had, at best, a superficial knowledge of its
> culture and its people. This ignorance freed him to imagine Japan as a
> utopian space where religious feeling, immersion in the natural world, and
> the making of art formed a single, interdependent state of being._

Oh, so he nailed it anyway, basically.

------
bshepard
If anyone wants to dive deeper into Van Gogh, his letters are all online and
translated into English:
[http://vangoghletters.org/vg/](http://vangoghletters.org/vg/)

~~~
HenryTheHorse
The letters are fascinating and totally worth a read. There's one letter in
which he simply says (to his brother, IIRC, and I paraphrase): "a painter
must, above all, paint well". It struck me as a very Zen-like observation.

------
ericsoderstrom
This article sounds unnecessarily biased. All art has stylistic and thematic
influences. Nothing in Van Gogh's experimentation with or usage of Japanese
elements looks egregious to me.

~~~
kazinator
Some of it involves tracing the originals in a fair amount of detail. But that
it seems that just what he wanted: the exact picture with its essential forms
in the same places and proportions, but with his style over it, making
possible an A-B comparison. There is a method to it.

~~~
kprzen
I don't think there has to be a method for every little thing he did. Much of
it isn't "production" that he was selling. He made a copy of something and
it's still around, including some clumsy ones, like this one which does not
have the energy of the original.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_works_of_Vincent_van_Gog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_works_of_Vincent_van_Gogh#/media/File:Van_Gogh_1881-04,_Etten_-
_Sower_\(after_Millet\)_F_830_JH_1.jpg)

[https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-francois-millet/the-
sower-18...](https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-francois-millet/the-sower-1850)

