The Yellow Books of Vincent van Gogh

Hello friends!

As the fall semester comes to an end, I realize that I have not published any new blog posts in a while. If any of you are in school or have children in school, you know how stressful the ends of semesters can be. I have a little more than three weeks left and three more papers due, so the stress is starting to pile on. I can hardly enjoy Christmas season with all the work I need to focus on! And for those of you who know me well, I'm all about the Christmas cheer.

Gauguin's Chair, 1888

I figured that while I'm working on these papers, maybe I'll take a few moments to talk about one of my papers. I'm here for school, right? Yet all of my posts have been about me going on adventures around Scotland. Not that I'm complaining - I'm so fortunate to be here and to have had the time to explore. However, with it being crunch time, I'm full steam ahead with the research and paper writing, so here is the one I am currently working on.

Vincent van Gogh! Thoroughly researched, maybe to the point where it would be absurd to try and write any original material on the painter. I've fought with myself for years, telling myself that he wasn't one of my favorite painters because that is sooo cliché and obvious. But once I gave up being a pretentious artsy fartsy historian, I realized that it's ok to like, even love, van Gogh. He has so many wonderful paintings, drawings, and sketches that the only cliché part about liking van Gogh is being a superficial fan (meaning, "I love Starry Night and those sunflower ones but can't name any other work he's done"). He's an avid reader and writer, and one glance at any of his hundreds of letters that he wrote will come up with references to hundreds of authors and books.

This is where my paper comes in. The class is called "Text and Image in France from Diderot to Dada", so I had to choose a topic of my choice within the parameters of the class. So I quite daringly chose to focus on van Gogh. I say "daringly" because as I found out from my tutor ("tutor" is fancy UK talk for "professor"), van Gogh is thoroughly researched and I would need to find an angle to make my research unique. After two failed attempts at a topic, I developed one that not only interests me but works for my tutor as well.

Still Life with Bible and Zola's 'Joie de Vivre', 1885

My paper is going to be focusing on van Gogh's use of books in his art. I had never noticed before how many paintings and drawings he has with books in them - I counted about 18 - so I'm only choosing a couple to work on. Most of the books have titles written on them, allowing me to figure out what the books are, who their authors are, and what they mean to van Gogh and to the painting. I'll be reading his letters and books by other authors to build up my research and bibliography. (The theme of books/letters/art goes along with the class which is about text and image)

Oleanders and Zola's 'Joie de Vivre", 1888

So yeah. Instead of writing my paper, I'm here writing about my paper... Classic. If anyone is interested in reading van Gogh's letters, they are all compiled online, the result of fifteen years of research! And you can search by keywords, correspondent, place, period, letters with sketches, or advance search for his writings about specific works of art. It's really a remarkable accomplishment of the Van Gogh Museum and Huygens ING. Now... Back to work!

Cheers!