What are your thoughts on Van Gogh's work? (50 to 100 words or more)

As an art major in college, I was exposed to a lot for different artists, in my studies. I have also traveled to Italy, trying to satisfy my hunger for art from the renaissance period, the baroque, and Michaelangelo’s ceiling, and all the grandeur that is Rome, and my exposure to impressionism and the impressionist painters was not nearly that complete. I knew the artists, and their major works, from slides in Art history classes. But didn't seek or get a deeper understanding of impressionists until much later in life. When I went to the impressionist exhibit at the de Young museum in San Francisco, and I stood in the same room with, and saw the actual canvas that was home to Monet’s “Sunrise”, and Degas’ dancers, and “Whistler’s Mother” and many more. But I did not turn around and fight against the current of the crowd, trying to go back, and look again, and then, a third time, at the same painting, for any of them except Van Gogh “A Starry Night on the Rhone”.I could have looked at that painting for hours, days even, and not been tired of it. I have never seen anything like the way that paint on a simple panel moved, and breathed.VINCENT Van Gogh, in a simple manner, turned flat yellow dots into the light on the water that danced, into the night sky. Instead of painting the stars, or the lights, or the ripple in the water with his brush, he just made a yellow mark over the navy in a way that became those things.

I think his interpretation of light is much different than other impressionists. I think he portrays light and shadow in a way unique only to him. It makes sense. It is beautiful, yet most unpredictable. Had he not show us his vision of Starry Night, we would not be able to guess the language, the grammar of how he would produce this image.

Painters have a stunning ability to portray a three-dimensional vision, in two dimensions, that appears as if it is three. Vincent Van Gogh does not bring us back with that same sort of sleight of hand, through perspective, and shadows to the illusion of three-dimension.

He leaves us in the two, yet still manages to create a subtle, natural balance and movement.

A different sense of minimalism.

Explanation:

Just one of his paintings was sold during his whole lifetime. And the man painted around 900 paintings and some 1100 sketches, roughly amounting to an average of 4 artworks per week in an artistic career of 10 years. I sometimes wonder what is the limit of a man's passion?

Till what limit can you push yourself when you're living in the shroud of anonymity; when you're a nonentity, nothing in the world's eye.

Vincent really stands as a tall example of resilience. Today the 'The Starry Night' is one of the most recognizable paintings in the world, but very few people know that he painted it by the window of his room in a sanatorium.

He died a sad man. The one painter whose works have been sold for $ 100+ million was no less than a nomad in his time. He was laughed upon, considered a crack, self-mutilated himself, and ended tragically. But there were people who had faith in him beyond doubt. His brother Theo and his friend and doctor, Dr. Gachet, admired his work. His brother supported him financially throughout Vincent's lifetime.

In the words of Van Gogh himself, 'I would rather die of passion than of boredom.'