What the Arlésienne is missing
Becca and I certainly aren’t the first two painters to create work based on the same subject.
Vincent Van Gogh’s L’Arlésienne circa 5 November 1888
Most famously, the owner of the Café de la Gare in Arles sat for the Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin together in their shared studio in southern France. Van Gogh painted this portrait of Madame Ginoux…
Paul Gauguin’s Madame Ginoux circa 4 November 1888
...in the same time it took Gauguin to make this preparatory sketch for a later painting.
Vincent Van Gogh’s Le Café de Nuit circa 8 September 1888
A few months earlier, Van Gogh had created this painting of Madame Ginoux’s café. He had lived across from it for a while before Gauguin arrived in Arles and had come to know Madame Ginoux by frequenting her café.
Paul Gauguin’s Le Café de Nuit 4-12 November 1888
After drawing Madame Ginoux, Gauguin created this piece in response to Van Gogh’s Night Café.
Vincent Van Gogh’s Monsieur Ginoux early December 1888
It seems that the works were acceptable to Madame Ginoux and to her husband as well, because, a month later, Monsieur Ginoux sat for Van Gogh…
Paul Gauguin’s Monsieur Ginoux early December 1888
...and Gauguin.
Vincent Van Gogh’s L’Arlésienne early December 1888
Around the same time as the portraits of Monsieur Ginoux, Van Gogh also re-made his portrait of Madame Ginoux. This second painting, which is compositionally based on his first, has a more finished quality than the one completed a few weeks earlier.
Vincent Van Gogh’s L’Arlésienne February 1890
Later still, when Van Gogh was in an asylum, he produced five more paintings of Madame Ginoux based on Gauguin’s sketch from 1888, including the one shown here.
To my mind, what’s missing from these remarkable juxtapositions is a sense of what Madame Ginoux and her husband meant to the artists. Sure, the differences in style and perception of Van Gogh and Gauguin are fascinating, but technique and intent are the least of the factors that contribute to the differences between two artists’ takes on the same person. The relationship between artist and sitter is far more influential on the finished portrait.
In their Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers try to outline how the artists and their sitters understood each other, but the information is spotty and the authors do a lot of educated guessing. Understandably, Druick and Zeger end up focusing on what is more clearly revealed in these paintings and also in letters from the period: the relationship between Van Gogh and Gauguin.
But a portrait is about more than the artist or, in this case, the competing artists. It’s about one person—the artist—crystalizing the chemistry she-he shares with another—the subject. In that sense, the relationships that Van Gogh and Gauguin had (or didn’t have) with Madame and Monsieur Ginoux is what’s missing from their paintings.
And it’s that lack that Becca and I have tackled in Subjective. Our series is more than an exercise in different styles and different perceptions. It’s about the delicate nature of portraiture as a genre that exposes the intricacies of human relationships.
To see Subjective, visit the North View Gallery by 5 February…
Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM
North View Gallery
Portland Community College Sylvania Campus
12000 SW 49th Avenue, Portland, OR 97219
RELATED ARTICLES:
- The context makes the art.
- Paul Missal’s self-portrait, a lesson
- This (for example) is a real person.
CATEGORIES: - Philosophy - On portraiture - Featuring artists - Subjective -
(3) Comments / Commentaires: What the Arlésienne is missing
While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to treat people like objects for the sake of making a painting, I don’t think that the finished work qualifies as a portrait.
What’s more, I think it’s impossible to drain all relationship influences and other psychological stuff from a representation of a person. I don’t believe humans are wired to do that. We find faces in the shapes of electrical outlets or in looking at a car straight on—we see them everywhere and anywhere! And that’s because faces equal communicating and relating, both big parts of being human.
Faces always mean more than we mean them to.
I agree with you, Gwenn. And, as a person with an “older” face, I think a person’s history is in his/her face, too.
Don’t you think that the artist should value the “gift” that the subject of the painting contributes to the finished portrait? When one looks at something (i.e. anything in creation) one should have a curiosity about the existence of the subject. Even a still life is full of questions a painter could ask: Where did the design for that vase come from? Who was the potter? What makes the surface so shiny? Do the flowers have a scent? Is that drape a velvet? I wonder what it feels like in the hand.
I appreciate the way that you make an attempt to know the subjects that you paint. I have a copy of a portrait you painted of our mutual friend, Claire, and you really captured her essence. You VALUED her, you didn’t just use her for a subject. That is why your portraits are so successful. Of course the unusual use of paint makes them interesting, but your curiosity and intelligent knowing makes them successful.
joshua emrich...
I personally question the need for all artists to be interested in the psychology or even the inner life of the sitter. I am most interested in the OBJECTIVE aspects of different faces. I at still interested in people, just not there sacred psyches which is the historical prerequisite of portraits.
--- -- - --- - ---- - - --- ----- -- -What is wrong with celebrating the OBJECTIVE part of people, also?..