Praeterita

Artsy's Vincent Van Gogh home page It's just come to my attention that Artsy, the online resource for art collecting and art education, has a page/site devoted to Vincent Van Gogh . I spent a few minutes looking at it and clicking through on some of the links, and it seems to be a museum-quality presentation of the life and work of the great Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, and which includes a running summary of every art exhibition at any one time that contains works by Van Gogh. Worth looking at it if you're a fan of Vincent Van Gogh's work (and let's face it, who isn't?).

Actually, a recreation of the famous bedroom from the Yellow House in Arles, which Van Gogh rented in 1888. The Art Institute of Chicago created an exact replica of the second 'bedroom' painting in a condo in Chicago, as a publicity stunt for their exhibition Van Gogh's Bedrooms -- and I was invited to be the second person to stay in the room overnight. I'm writing an article about it for Hyperallergic. (UPDATE: Here is the link to the published article: Inside Van Gogh's Bedroom .) Meanwhile, this happened: Our writer @hartiganartist is spending the night at the van Gogh room at the @artinstitutechi (📷 Philip Hartigan) A photo posted by Hyperallergic (@hyperallergic) on Feb 16, 2016 at 4:09pm PST

A few nights ago I finished reading the mammoth 900 page biography of Vincent Van Gogh from 2011, written by Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. It took about two weeks, and in the middle of that period I was invited to talk about VVG to a group of students at the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan. Jeff Wescott, a friend who teaches there, runs a biography class, and they are due to read and discuss Van Gogh's letters soon. Sidenote: Jeff got Misty Copeland, the amazing ballet dancer, to talk to the same class a few weeks earlier about her recently published autobiography. As the following photo shows, she is also jaw-droppingly gorgeous, so I felt sorry that the same students had to endure my mug after spending time with this: Be that as it may, it was fun to reflect on how Van Gogh has affected me as an artist, going all the way back to me teenage years. I was fourteen when an art teacher introduced me to his work. For years I had a reproduction of one...

In honour of posting my last extract from Van Gogh's letters, here is early 1970s schmaltz-and-cheese-meister Don McLean's horribly sentimental, and of course utterly beautiful, song about you know who (thanks to folkman123 for posting it on the You Tubes):   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is Number 30, and as I've been so engrossed in Van Gogh's letters recently, I thought it was time to consider something by the loony low-lander.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader