EVENTS
THE AUTOPHAGY OF DECADENCE
VAN GOGH'S BUTTERFLY LOSES THE DUST FROM ITS WINGS
Thetinsel of Vincent Van Gogh's work can no longer stand the spotlight of fame. His museum in Amsterdam intends to save his paintings from the dreaded light that degrades them, leaving them to live in darkness. But what would Van Gogh's paintings be without his vibrant colors? And what would our current image be without his decorative and virtual appearance?
THE COLOR IMPULSE
Van Gogh's inner spiritual strength transcends his thick and violent brushstrokes on canvas, of bright and complementary colors, applied with brushes, hand, palette knife or directly from the tin tube.
This famed style was consolidated during the years 1886 to 1888. He explains it thus: "Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what is before my eyes, I use color in a more arbitrary way in order to express myself more energetically."
It was on February 9, 1888 that Van Gogh settled in Arles in search of the illumination and color of Provence, fleeing from the swarm of iron and gaslight of the French capital. There he painted "plein air", with episodes of delirium and hallucinations (due in part to lead poisoning from his creamy yellows and whites), and produced more than two hundred canvases in fifteen months!
The wonderful plasticity of his oil paintings leads him to capture everything that surrounds him: from the classic country landscapes to the modernity of night cafés, his friends, and even his room... In short, everything he has before his eyes. Or what he thinks he sees?
EXPRESSIONISM OF THE MIND
Van Gogh uses metaphors as a resource to describe the soul of things. The series of butterflies made during 1889 and 1890, symbolizes for him the hope and the power of transformation of men and women. Let us not forget that he was a sick individual who lived between cycles of exaltation and melancholy.
In one of his missives he relates: "Yesterday I drew a very large and very strange night moth called the death's head...".
It is a huge lepidopteran of the Saturnidae family(Saturnia Pyri), which traces recognizable shapes - even with its mesmerizing four ocelli - adding a kind of skull characteristic of the Sphinx tête de mort. The whole drawing is tinged with a bluish-green hue, more cheerful and more in keeping with a peacock than the corresponding brownish tones. It looks like a butterfly, but its corniform antennae give it away. As a moth, it cannot help but be attracted by the night lights (which come from the purity of the coves and the tempting red lanterns).
It is, in fact, a work that mixes vitality and fatality, a harbinger of the fate of our most notorious post-impressionist -he would die shortly after- and of his work: the posthumous revenge of the moth that did not want to be eternally a butterfly.
NICE TO MEET YOU AGAIN
In this age of social media, there is a stark contrast between the way we express ourselves and the image we project. We remove filters from our words to add them without restraint to our appearance, which in many cases is only a "digital" or "cosmetic" illusion of ourselves. How far will we stretch this contrived trend when, as in Van Gogh's legacy, "madame decadence" makes an appearance?
We have become accustomed to contemplating works in museums behind thick glass, with poor lighting or poor restoration, with a layer of dirt or without their original polychromy; and that does not stop us from admiring them, even though we have lost the vision of their original brilliance. There is, therefore, a charm in the beauty of decadence, perhaps because the decrepitude that devours us self-completes our existence and brings us back to the origin of being and of things?
We are frightened that Van Gogh's famous sunflowers and butterflies "wither" (their synthetic pigments are being oxidized by light and carbon dioxide in the air: the bright yellows with lead chromate darken and the reddish ones with red lead bleach) ..... But the artist would have been fascinated by this chameleonic power of the tonality of his paintings. Becauseauthenticity and beauty, as the Dutchman preached, is not in the image of things, but in their spirit .
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