Van Gogh, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin
About this video
Two speakers look at Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin in the Fogg collection. They highlight its daring, unprecedented green background, the way brushstrokes flow around the face and how van Gogh builds volume with color rather than light and dark, like Cézanne. They also explain that the portrait was a gift to Gauguin, linked to van Gogh's dream of a brotherhood of artists and his love of East Asian art.
You'll be able to
- explain how van Gogh builds the structure of a face with color and brushwork.
- compare building volume with color to traditional chiaroscuro.
- explain why this portrait was made as a gift to Gauguin.
- describe how contrasts in the painting create meaning.
Key words
- chiaroscuro
- Using strong contrasts of light and dark to model forms so they look three-dimensional.
- self-portrait
- A picture an artist makes of themselves.
- memento mori
- Latin for 'remember you must die': an image that reminds us of death.
- colorist
- An artist especially skilled and bold in the use of color.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: We're looking at a painting in the Fogg's collection. It's a very famous self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh-- (DUTCH ACCENT) Vincent van Gogh-- and it's one of the toughest self-portraits I think I've ever seen. SPEAKER 2: Tough in terms of the color?
Tough in terms of all that van Gogh is achieving at this moment in the late 1880s? SPEAKER 1: This is a painting that feels incredibly modern to me. A willingness to take risks that is-- SPEAKER 2: It's amazing in that way. SPEAKER 1: --that are breathtaking, really.
SPEAKER 2: This is a color that no artist ever used before. And an entire background painted like that? What nerve he had to take such radical steps. SPEAKER 1: So, my eye immediately goes to the structure of the painting, the way in which he's created the architecture of the face.
His use of line. I look at the way in which the brush strokes wrap around and sort of cascade around the eye and down the nose. And it's almost like a river of paint as it flows across that face and begins to define it. But then it's not just brush work at all.
It's the ways in which structure is actually built by color-- SPEAKER 2: Yeah, which I think was something that Cezanne was also thinking about. Creating volume with color instead of in the usual way, with chiaroscuro. But that the pinks and the purples that are in his temple, and the way those modulate over to greens is like nothing I've ever seen.
SPEAKER 1: So he's treating the structure of his face, of his head, of his skull very much as if it was a kind of plastic medium. He writes about this portrait, that he has created eyes almost as if he was Japanese, a reference to his love of East Asian painting.
But this was a painting that was destined as a gift to Gauguin, as part of an exchange-- SPEAKER 2: Right. With this sort of Utopian idea of a brotherhood of artists that was so important to him. SPEAKER 1: And of course, Gauguin also would have been very interested in East Asian art.
This way that he's rendered the hair on his head, plastered down. And it's a really strong contrast, visually. The way in which the coat feels heavy and rough and oversized. And then there's the very tight quality-- SPEAKER 2: To skin. SPEAKER 1: To his skin, yeah.
SPEAKER 2: Well, what I was noticing that too and what it was reminding me of was a skull. The sense of the bones underneath his flesh and almost a kind of memento mori. Look at the browns and the blues, rust colors in his jacket, and-- SPEAKER 1: This green. This sea of acid light that surrounds him.
SPEAKER 2: He is just an amazing colorist. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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