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A
Story
August 8, 2000 -----
I
went to a computer convention with a few friends in NY City and
afterwards we saw the NY Mets at Shea Stadium. That may not seem
important to Van Gogh admirers, but because the game ran late, due
to a rain delay, we decided not to make the 3 hour drive home and
stayed through Sunday. We happened to be walking a block away from
the Museum Of Modern Art and I thought we should go see if they
might have any VanGogh's there. I did not know that Starry Night was
there and when I walked around the wall barrior and saw it I had
shivers. I was afraid to get too close. My friend was laughing at me
because I was afraid to get right up there and look. But it was such
an emotional moment. It took me almost 10 minutes to move close
enough to see the details. Wow, what a moment. And I was thinking
the night before that watching the Mets win at Shea was one of the
most exciting moments of my life, as I had never been there or seen
my favorite team play an official game. As exciting as that was,
seeing Starry Night in person was absolutely sublime. The brush
stokes have never been truly visible in photos and to see the little
gaps where there was no paint was astonishing to me. Olive Trees
also had these small areas all around and within. It made me wonder
if it was done on purpose by Vincent, or if he just did not have
enough paint and decided to make the canvas areas part of the
painting. I saw hundreds of paintings there by other artists and did
not see one where anyone left little gaps. It just caught my eye and
made me think about what Vincent might have been contemplating.
Perhaps he was simply conserving scarce supplies of paint and
decided that the color of the canvas could be used as background.
Has that color of the canvas changed over the years? I wonder if it
looks the same as when Vincent painted it. Well it was behind glass,
but Olive Trees was not. I got so close with my eyeballs the
security guards were looking at me funny. LOL, I think they were
worried I was going to steal it, or eat it.... HAha. I went back to
look at it again before we left. I just had to see it for real one
more time. I feel like I have been transformed. I have greatly
admired VanGogh for his paintings and letters for several years. Now
I understand.... why his paintings are far and away the most
valuable paintings of any artist who has ever put his heart and soul
on canvas. Seeing Starry Night on my computer screen or in books on
flat paper is an impressive sight. Seeing it in person, well I
cannot find a word that exceeds impressive as far as I feel it.
JJ
Letters from Vincent to Theo about
art
I am reminded of Vincent Van
Gogh whenever I think of how wrong the establishment can be about
someones art. Vincent knew this to be true and wrote about it in
letters to his brother several years before his suicide. In one such
letter to his brother Theo, written 07-31-1882, Vincent
wrote, "As to the money value of my work, I do not pretend to
anything less than it would greatly astonish me if in time my work
did not become just as salable as that of others. Of course I cannot
tell whether that will happen now or later, but I think the surest
way, which cannot fail, is to work from nature faithfully and
energetically. Sooner or later feeling and love for nature meet with
a response from people who are interested in art. It is an artists
duty to be entirely absorbed by nature and to use all his
intelligence to express sentiment in his work so that it becomes
intelligible to other people. In my opinion working for the market
is not exactly the right way; on the contrary, it means fooling the
art lovers. The true painters have not done this; the sympathy they
eventually received was a result of their sincerity. That is all I
know about it, and I don't think I need to know more."
This and
the following letter are from a book of Vincent's letters translated
by W.H.Auden called "Van Gogh: A Self Portrait" I highly recommend
this book to anyone interested in Van Gogh's art or life. It is an
eye opening experience into the mind of a great artist and a
misunderstood man. He was not some wacko who cut off part of his ear
and shot himself to death after going insane. He was a deeply caring
man. He was a genius who painted so far over the heads of the
so-called experts that they could not see his vision and would not
even show his paintings in art exhibitions. How ironic that his
paintings now sell for much more than any other artist who has ever
painted ($82.5 Million for The Portrait of Dr.Gachet and $71.5
Million for his last Self-Portrait) when only a couple of them sold
while he was alive. If not for Theo saving the paintings and letters
Vincent sent him, we might never have known this man and and his
tender heart.
In a letter less than two weeks earlier,
written from July 19-23,1882, Vincent wrote to Theo, "I will
go out and work in the open air, even if it should cause my illness
to return. I cannot keep from working any longer. Art is jealous,
she does not want us to choose illness in preference to her, so I do
what she wishes. Therefore I hope that within a short time you will
receive a few pretty good new drawings. People like me must not be
ill, so to speak. I want you to undestand clearly my conception of
art. One must work long and hard to grasp the essence. What I want
and aim at is confoundedly difficult, and yet I do not think I aim
too high. I want to do drawings which touch some people." "There is
at least something straight from my own heart. In either figure or
landscape I should wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but
serious sorrow. In short, I want to progress so far that people will
say of my work, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly, notwithstanding
my so-called roughness, perhaps even because of it. It seems
pretentious to talk this way now, but this is the reason why I want
to push on with all my strength. What am I in most people's eyes? A
nonentity, or an eccentric and disagreeable man - somebody who has
no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of
low. Very well, even if this were true, then I should want my work
to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.
This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less
on anger than on love, more on serenity than on passion. It is true
that I am often in the greatest misery, but still there is a calm
pure harmony and music inside me." "Art demands persistant work,
work in spite of everything, and continuous obsevation. By
persistant, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up
your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person."
In
1888 Vincent wrote, "I let myself go, paint what I see and
how I feel, and damn the rules!"
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Perfectionist McCartney Not Content
to 'Let It Be'
LONDON (Reuters) -
Pop legend Paul McCartney
was so furious about changes a top producer made to one of his hit
songs that he sent a scathing rebuke to his lawyer that no one
should ever be allowed to tamper with his music again.
In
30-year-old correspondence released by the British public record
office, the former Beatle ended a letter to lawyer Allen Klein with
"don't ever do it again" after Klein appointed superstar pop
producer Phil Spector to work on "The Long and Winding Road," the
group's last number one hit in America.
"In future no one will
be allowed to add or subtract from a recording of one of my songs
without my permission," McCartney said in the letter, the Guardian
newspaper reported on Saturday.
Spector, whose name will forever
be associated with a string of catchy pop singles in the 1950s and
1960s, worked on the Beatles' "Let It Be" album which featured "The
Long and Winding Road."
McCartney said he hated the string
accompaniment Spector put on the single.
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Poetry
Copyright
If you write poetry, you should protect yourself by
getting the copyright from the Library of Congress website. The link
to FL106 below, right, is the form you need with
instructions on how to do this and how much the fee is. When I
sent my collection, it was $35 for all of them in one complete
volume. It's a heck of a lot easier than getting published....
All works
Copyright © JF Johnson
US Copyright Office
Registration
TXu1-162-978
You may also be interested in "Print On Demand"
publishing. This is a step up from "Vanity" Publishing. Although you
have to pay for set up costs, the books are only printed when they
are ordered and can be delivered directly to the customer after they
pay on-line, or you can order them yourself at a discount and
re-sell them at open mic readings or wherever you wish. You will get
royalties for books sold through them or through booksellers and
their websites. It is not cheap, but your book does become
available through bookstores and on-line book wharehouses such as
Amazon.com. This also makes it possible to go to major book sellers
like Barnes & Noble, Borders and others, or to their websites
and order your book of poetry. Click the link to Xlibris
below for more info.
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