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!

Kirkcaldy

On top of the Old Kirk bell tower overlooking Kirkcaldy. The church here is St. Brycedale Church.

One of my favorite things about studying art is the opportunities I get to visit new places. I can see images of paintings and sculptures in books or online, but this is no comparison to seeing art in person. There is a type of magic when standing before a work of art; all your senses are involved. I've been to many art museums in the States, and now in Scotland I'm getting the opportunity to branch out to new museums and historic sites.

Morris & Co. stained glass in St. Brycedale Church, designed by Edward Burne-Jones, circa 1890s. This shows Moses and the burning bush.

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is a course about the Victorian era English designer, William Morris. Morris opened a design firm, Morris & Co., in 1861 which included producing for sale wallpaper, textiles, chintzes, furniture, and stained glass (among other things). I chose to focus my seminar paper (second of three papers for the class) on Morris stained glass. Morris (and many other glaziers of the time) looked to Medieval stained glass for style and material inspiration. My paper will focus on the revival of stained glass in the Victorian period and how Morris & Co. played a significant role in the revival. There was a need for a revival because before the 1850s-1860s, stained glass was not very good quality and lacked originality. Morris & Co. brought it back!

Another Morris & Co. window in the Old Kirk, designed by Burne-Jones. The left is Moses and the Egyptians being consumed by the Red Sea and on the right is a scene of Joseph, Mary, and infant Jesus with an angel. Also circa 1890s.

Today, the William Morris class took a trip to Kirkcaldy, a town a little more than an hour southwest of St. Andrews. There we visited the St. Brycedale Church and the Old Kirk to see three sets of Morris & Co. windows. They were designed by Edward Burne-Jones, the principle stained glass artist of the company as well as good friend of Morris. Burne-Jones was primarily known as being a painter, but his talents overlapped into many different mediums.
 

The William Morris class inside the cafe at St. Brycedale Church. On the right is the instructor and behind her are the windows

One of the distinguishing features of Morris & Co. windows is the colors. As opposed to typical jewel-like primary colors, Morris often used earthy greens and browns, deep reds, and rich blues. Another feature seen in many Morris & Co. windows is the background foliage which are typical of Morris' patternwork.

Inside the Old Kirk. The two windows in the picture are both Morris & Co. windows.

After having breakfast in the little cafe in the St. Brycedale Church, in which there was one of the Burne-Jones windows, we headed over to the Old Kirk to see another set. After seeing these, we headed back into St. Brycedale and looked at the final set of windows in another part of the church.  However before this, while still at the Old Kirk, we had the most interesting and unplanned part of the trip: we were able to climb the bell tower.

The first set of stairs leading up to the bell tower in the Old Kirk. This was the only part with a railing.

 Now I don't know how I end up in the strangest places of old buildings in Scotland (mines, anyone?) but it's definitely worth the minor anxiety of potentially getting trapped or falling off of something high. In the bell tower of the Old Kirk, we were allowed to ring the bell, Quasimodo style, by pulling on the rope attached to it - which I didn't actually get a chance to do but some of the other girls did. Then after this we climbed a narrow set of winding stairs, no railing to hold on to, we emerged out into the open air on a small balcony that went around the whole tower. Inside, we could touch the bell. There was a little mallet and a note saying that the bell played different notes if hit in different parts - so I hit away!

The bell inside of the Old Kirk, Kirkcaldy.

So the moral of this story: Study art history, move to a foreign land, climb scary bell towers, and hit bells with tiny mallets. Worked for me :)

Cheers!

(For more pictures from Kirkcaldy, visit my flickr page!)