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  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: "Only here colour is to do everything,

  • and by its simplification a grander style to things is

  • to be suggestive here first of rest, or of sleep in general.

  • In a word, looking at the picture

  • ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination."

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: So the passage that you just read

  • came from a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo,

  • and it actually refers to the first version of this painting.

  • But the passage that stands out for me,

  • "in this painting colour has to do everything,"

  • applies equally well to this painting.

  • And when I think about that phrase

  • I think about a radical idea that

  • happens in the end of the 19th century with painting.

  • The formal elements-- the color, the lines,

  • the shapes-- painters begin to explore the way

  • that these elements can be expressive on their own.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: What you're talking about

  • is the root of abstraction itself.

  • So it's not that this is representative,

  • it's that the formal qualities of painting itself

  • can have its own experiential aspect,

  • rather like music, which uses pure tone.

  • Color also, form also, could have an emotional value.

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: That's right.

  • That the lines that make up these painting,

  • that the sense of solidity, that the colors, that the harmonies

  • between the colors, the relationship

  • of the shapes-- that these things could suggest

  • an idea or an emotion, regardless

  • of what they represent.

  • Moving away from the idea of art copying the real world.

  • And in this case, the idea that Van Gogh wanted to represent

  • was one of peacefulness and harmony and repose.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: For so many people,

  • they think about Van Gogh's brushwork,

  • and they think about his biography.

  • But listening to the artist's own words you

  • realize that his attention was on the structural qualities

  • and the emotional qualities of color.

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: And although we can see his brushwork

  • in the pillows-- where the paint almost

  • seems to describe the puffiness of the pillows--

  • and even though there is a sense of the space tilting

  • up and rushing backward too quickly

  • and things seeming slightly askew,

  • I do get that sense, from the painting, of Van Gogh trying

  • to create a world here in this yellow house in Arles,

  • where he had moved from Paris.

  • A place that could be the basis for a community.

  • A place for artists to come and then a place

  • to focus on making art.

  • And there's something about the simplicity of the space that

  • feels so different than the materialism

  • and sophistication of Paris.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So this is a refuge and a deeply personal

  • one.

  • But he's created the space with such love and such care.

  • He's in a sense inviting us to feel right at home.

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: And love and care in a different way

  • than what we might normally expect.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: The care that I

  • meant was the care that's based on his observation,

  • his experience in this room, his having touched that seat,

  • his having slept in that bed.

  • His intimate experience that he's

  • been able to convey to us with an extraordinary immediacy.

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: Think for a second

  • of the sophistication of the Paris art world,

  • and the expectation of a Parisian audience.

  • And look at that wooden nightstand, or toilet table,

  • as he called it in his letter.

  • It looks like it was drawn by a child.

  • It has no modulation.

  • It has blue outlines, and the color is otherwise flat.

  • The perspective doesn't make sense.

  • I think this painting must have looked

  • like it was made by an artist who wasn't trained properly.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And yet, here's

  • an artist who has really worked through a catalog

  • of the styles of the 19th century.

  • Beginning for instance, with the art of people like Millet,

  • moving through the impressionists,

  • and then really paying attention to the neo-impressionists,

  • people like Seurat.

  • and here, finding a a direct application of paint

  • that, I think, for Van Gogh felt absolutely authentic.

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: Authenticity is the key word.

  • I think for a lot of artists, including

  • Gauguin at the end of the 1880s and the beginning

  • of the 1890s, this idea of finding authentic experience

  • and that being not the experience of the city.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: This looks back

  • to some of the ideas that surround the work of, say,

  • Courbet, where there's this clear contrast

  • between the sophistication of the city

  • and, in a sense, the truth and directness of the country.

  • And Van Gogh's been able to convey that beautifully.

  • This is a painting that is also meant

  • to be a kind of invitation to his friends in the north,

  • that he was hoping would come down and join him.

  • DR. BETH HARRIS: He has an idea of creating

  • a rather utopian setting for artists to make art away

  • from the city, in some sort of communion with nature.

  • DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Van Gogh gives us

  • a kind of extraordinarily sophisticated innocence.

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