When most people first hear the name Van Gogh, they think of the Van Gogh portrayed by popular culture – brilliant, tormented, and driven to insanity by his artistic dedication. Yet this portrayal of Van Gogh fails to acknowledge the artist’s role as a social critic – a critic influenced significantly by his socioeconomic circumstances. Even modern-day art historians, those people deemed most likely to consider Van Gogh from every possible viewpoint, often reject this facet of the artist. They instead attribute his creative genius to either his desire to participate in the era’s leading artistic movements or his inherent mental instability. While famed art historian Griselda Pollock, for example, calls Van Gogh’s first major work The Potato …show more content…
After examining Van Gogh’s personal circumstances, though, this rebuttal seems improbable. While Van Gogh’s mental volatility indisputably swayed the direction of his works, Van Gogh’s cognitive issues were not the main impetus for The Night Café. In a correspondence to his brother Theo, for instance, Van Gogh complains somewhat flippantly about his financial issues with the night café’s owner. Forcing Van Gogh to request a 300-franc loan, these financial issues also form the immediate motivation for The Night Café. In this letter, Van Gogh himself tells Theo that “I’d told [the owner] that to get my own back on him for having paid him so much money for nothing, I’d paint his whole filthy old place as a way of getting my money back” (Letter 676). While Van Gogh later claims to have no significant animosity towards the owner, his strong language ridiculing the owner’s “filthy old place” illustrates at least some mixed feelings on his part. These mixed feelings towards the night café’s owner bleeds through to his painting, which clearly contains a slight tint of yellow and green mixed within the owner’s otherwise white suit. The sharp contrast between the owner’s white suit and the laborers’ dark ensemble accentuates their socioeconomic differences, while the small flashes of yellow and green infused within the …show more content…
While Van Gogh’s depictions of industrialism’s effects may have been particularly groundbreaking for the time – perhaps a little too groundbreaking for its own good (Pollock 429), he certainly garnered inspiration from other artists. Far from being the sole man standing “at the apex of the top segment [of a triangle representing artistic development]” (Kandinsky II.3), Van Gogh acquired inspiration from other “painters of the Parisian avant-garde […] who had contended with the difficulties of founding a modern art upon modernity in its immediate socio-economic and moral manifestations – the modern city” (Pollock 410). Furthermore, his letters indicate frequent communication with other Post-Impressionistic painters such as Paul Gauguin and Camille Pissarro, who undoubtedly influenced both his painting style and his decision to draw certain scenes (Letter 676). What makes Van Gogh more innovative than his fellow painters, though, was not simply his willingness to challenge the traditional. Other painters of the time also sought to contest the norm, asking audiences to think about peasants from foreign colonies such as “Provence, Brittany, [and] Tahiti” (Pollock 410). What makes Van Gogh unique was his willingness to challenge the traditional in the bars and taverns located in his audience’s own backyard. The seed of Van Gogh’s desire