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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)136 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism136
Figure 31.29Fragment of a Maori doorpost (poupou)
in the style of Te Arawa, from New Zealand. Wood.blue. Cypresses writhe like flames, stars explode, the moon
seems to burn like the sun, and the heavens heave and roll
like ocean waves. Here, van Gogh’s expressive use of color
invests nature with visionary frenzy.
In his letters to Theo (an art dealer by profession), van
Gogh pledged his undying faith in the power of artistic
creativity. In 1888, just two years before he committed
suicide, he wrote: “I can do without God both in my life
and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without
something which is greater than I, which is my life—the
power to create. And if, defrauded of the power to create
physically, a man tries to create thoughts in place of chil-
dren, he is still part of humanity.” Assessing his own cre-
ativity, van Gogh claimed that making portraits allowed
him to cultivate what was “best and deepest.” “Altogether,”
he explained, “it is the only thing in painting which moves
me to the depths, and which more than anything else
makes me feel the infinite.” For van Gogh, the challenge
of portraiture lay in capturing the heart and soul of the
model. His many portraits of friends and neighbors, and
the twenty-four self-portraits painted between 1886 and
1889, elevate romantic subjectivity to new levels of confes-
sional intensity. In the Self-Portraitof 1889 (Figure 31.28),
for instance, where the pale flesh tones of the head are set
against an almost monochromatic blue field, the skull takes
on a forbidding, even spectral presence—an effect
enhanced by the lurid green facial shadows and the blue-
green eyes, slanted (as he related to Theo) so as to make
himself look Japanese. His brushstrokes, similar to thosethat evoke the coiling heavens in The Starry Night, charge
the surface with undulating rhythms that sharply contrast
with the immobile figure. This visual strategy underscores
the artist’s monkish alienation. Indeed, van Gogh con-
fessed to his colleague Gauguin that he saw himself in this
portrait as a simple Buddhist monk.Gauguin
Van Gogh’s friend and colleague, Paul Gauguin
(1848–1903) shared his sense of alienation from middle-
class European society. Part-Peruvian, his earliest child-
hood was spent in South America; in his teens he joined
the merchant marines before settling down in Paris. After
ten years of marriage, he abandoned his wife, his five chil-
dren, and his job as a Paris stockbroker to devote himself
to painting. He traveled to Brittany in northwest France,Figure 31.28 VINCENT VAN GOGH, Self-Portrait,- Oil on canvas, 25^1 ⁄ 2 211 ⁄ 4 in.