"Sunflower" by Vincent van Gogh

By: Bledar Kurti

The room was filled with the deep stillness of Over's nights.
Around two o'clock, Vincent turned his head slightly to the side and stammered:
Now, Theo, I would like to die.
After a few minutes, he closed his eyes.
Teoja felt that her brother was leaving her, leaving her forever.
Teoja went to Paris. But the poison for his brother's death was eating him, he was constantly taking it day and night, every hour, every moment.
His brain couldn't take all that bitterness...
And exactly six months after Vincent's death, Teoja died.

This was the end of the novel Thirst for life, by Irving Stone, published in Albanian in 1988, a work which, during the last breath of the communist regime, enabled us children, and undoubtedly also parents, still under curfew to the art universe, to learn more about life and the works of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). This illustrated novel amazed us with reproductions of his works. We were sad through them Potato eaters, we identified with Peasants harvesting, we fell from the swirling sky i Road near Nuenen, we were touched by Vincent's room in Arl, we cried when we thought that the artist had painted our torn shoes into the work footwear, we were illuminated in the deep recesses of dictatorial fear by the moon and twinkling stars in the picture Starry night, and we were touched, with an unprecedented sensation, by the work sunflower.

Ten years later, as I walked the heavy corridors of the National Gallery in London, even as I passed Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Renoir, Picasso, and many other masters of the art, my feet rushed to her: sunflower. My first experience with the work that had fascinated me since childhood.

Yellow. Somewhere even more yellow. A yellow background. Yellow petals. Vase with dark yellow, in ochre. Yellow vase. Signature in blue, some green flecks to make the yellow look even more yellow. Feeling yellow. Light. Sun. Life.

Vincent van Gogh painted twelve of them. Seemingly similar, but different in content and treatment. He never titled the paintings as sunflowers, but we recognize them as such by distinguishing them according to where they are exhibited, such as Sunflowers of London, Amsterdam, Munich, Tokyo, and Philadelphia.

Van Gogh started painting late. He was thirty years old when he started to follow the path of painting. But, he passed away at the age of thirty-seven, thus having only seven years of creativity, but thanks to which he left an extraordinary legacy in art, and an inalienable style.

Van Gogh is considered a meteor in the art world, he appeared only for a short time but with a great radiation.

By the age of thirty, Van Gogh was a living failure. He failed to succeed in anything he did. The son of a Protestant pastor, he himself intended to become one, and even worked as a non-professional pastor in England and Belgium, among the miners. He decided to become a painter. His younger brother, Theo, who worked in an art shop, introduced him to the Impressionist painters. His first works are dark, soulful but colorless. By going to Paris, Van Gogh met the Impressionists and understood something that today can be thought of as unimaginable and simple, but for the time was revolutionary: the power of colors. For the first time, paints began to be sold in tubes, and with a variety of shades. So Van Gogh, like Claude Monet and all other impressionists, used them all freely and boldly.

Tube paints were a product of industrialization. The idea was born by an unknown American painter John G. Rand who lived in London in 1841. Like all painters Rand tried to keep the paints from drying before he could use them again. At that time, the best ink storage was a pig's bladder wrapped in twine; the artist would pierce the bladder with a spike to get the ink. But there was no way to completely close the hole afterwards. And the bladders were uncomfortable to travel with, often bursting. So Rand came up with a revolutionary idea: the paint tube. Made of tin and sealed with a screw cap, Rand's invented tube was long-lasting, leak-proof, and could be opened and closed repeatedly. This invention enabled artists to go out into nature and paint, traveling to different places and depicting different subjects, and Van Gogh undoubtedly made the most of this opportunity by painting extraordinary landscapes, under the sky and under the sun, in fields and streets, day and night.

Van Gogh spiritually longed for an unfussy art that would give comfort and joy to every human being. He used dots and lines in unmixed colors to convey his troubled state of mind. No other artist had used mood as a tool with such coherence and effect. His works reveal turmoil. In them, the sky is never calm but whirling and dynamic; the grass is moving as if dancing with the wind; flowers seem to bloom before the viewer's eyes; the night shines like the day, the day seems sunnier than the sun itself. Even the human figures seem in motion even when they are sitting still, as if the blood and life itself refuse to remain dead and frigid in both the models and the eyes of the viewer of the paintings.

There is a feast of colors in Van Gogh's paintings, but there is also a dance of a single color, as we see in the wonderful paintings of Sunfloweri. Shades and celebration of yellow. Life that springs from dead flowers. Life is death. Only Van Gogh could achieve this paradoxical concept by making it acceptable to the eyes of humanity.

Whenever sunflowers are mentioned, or if the eye looks at sunflowers, the mind immediately goes to Van Gogh, and of course we start and smile with our hearts, driven by the vital passion that his sunflower paintings transmit, but rarely do people realize that those flowers are withering away, and in itself the subject is death. And despite the fact that on the surface such paintings look just like still life, they contain deep convictions. And the paintings sunflower of Van Gogh carry the artist's deep conviction, faith, knowledge and worldview about man.

Van Gogh was the son of a Calvinist Protestant pastor, and he himself was one. Calvinists have in their creed and belief what is known as "total depravity" which implies that man is a dead, sinful being, unable to save himself, and without God's divine intervention is lost in eternal hell. But from this broken, destroyed and dead being, with the divine touch, life can shine, which, as in every living thing in the world, comes from the sun, so even from Van Gogh's dead flowers we see a radiation of life. The whole series of paintings sunflower convey life from a dead subject. They unfold the story of man's salvation.

Van Gogh created twelve of these, and this is no accident, as twelve represents the number of apostles and the number of sunny hours of the day.

Who can see that our life in childhood, youth and early manhood, the life of worldly pleasures and vanities, is withered and withered, as it must wither and die - and so it will be, as flowers fall from trees - who manages to see that we receive a new life, full of its own strength, a life filled with the love of Christ and with a sadness that does not cause grief to anyone, a kind of divine sadness.

And it is these words of Van Gogh in the letter to his brother, Theo, that give the best interpretation of the paintings sunflower. Divine sadness, he says, and we get to see and feel it.

A devout believer, Van Gogh spent his nights reading the Bible, but avoiding socializing with people, he began to display an awkward social personality with his few friends and later collaborators.

Unlike Rembrandt who left nothing written and used self-portraits as a biography, Van Gogh has left us today over eight hundred letters that best reveal his nature and personality, comments on the works he painted, and stories and aspects from his life that we would never have had the opportunity to learn. Today we get to know Vincent van Gogh in word and image, as his letters and works reveal the artist as he really was.

In one of his letters he states that "I think that the painting of the peasants eating potatoes ... is the best of my works." And, obviously, it is an outstanding work, but the greatness of the paintings sunflower somewhat overshadows his previous works. Van Gogh painted sunflowers to decorate the room of his friend Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh was very fond of Japanese art and with the idea of ​​a colony of Japanese artists who, according to him, traveled together and painted together, he moved to Arles, in the south of France, inviting all the artists to come to the house his, known as The Yellow House, to paint together. While waiting for Gauguin, he painted white the walls of the room where Gauguin would stay and to decorate it Van Gogh painted two versions of Sunflower.

Gauguin's arrival in Arles is historic. Not only for the artistic influence and the production of the works but also from the personal aspect. Gauguin stayed only three months and for him it was a terrible experience as the two had different tastes, differed in painting style, and were completely different personalities. And, a terrible incident would change the course of Van Gogh's life, who on December 23, 1888, on Christmas Eve, cut off his own ear, then went to a brothel, and the cut earlobe, covered with a handkerchief, he gave it to a prostitute. Upon returning home, he lost consciousness. The police found him there and sent him to the hospital. From that time the two artists never met again. But years later, while living far away in the South Pacific, Gauguin himself made several paintings of sunflowers, in clear homage to his former friend.

After the incident with cutting the earlobe with a razor, Van Gogh painted a self-portrait with a bandaged ear, which is now in the Courtauld Gallery, London.

After leaving the hospital, Van Gogh began to suffer from paranoia and was hospitalized again. Van Gogh was now officially considered "mad." After a period of mental and emotional instability, Van Gogh returned to Paris apparently healthy and fit. But after a break in painting due to mental fluctuations, he decided to move to Auvers, a town on the outskirts of Paris, a quiet and suitable place for him. There he met Dr. Gachet in whom he found a kindred spirit, sensitive and friendly, and made two portraits of him. In Auvers, Van Gogh painted 80 paintings in two months, more than one a day. In them, a more observant and closer approach to nature is distinguished, emphasizing the beautiful aspect of things.

In the summer of 1883, Van Gogh wrote a prophetic letter to his brother, stating that he had six to ten years left to live:

Not only did I start painting relatively late, but besides I don't believe I have many years of life ahead of me...

So, as far as the length of work that awaits me in the future, I believe I can say without exaggeration: that my body will last a little longer, for a certain number of years - about six to ten more years .

And so it really happened. Exactly seven years later, on July 27, 1890, Van Gogh shot himself with a revolver. Doctor Gachet could not remove the bullet because he would surely die, so he just waited for a miracle. And, despite Van Gogh's refusal, the doctor notified his brother Theo, who arrived the next day to find the artist lying quietly in bed. “How I wish it would all end now,” Vincent told her.

Vincent van Gogh died on July 29 and was buried the next day. Emile Bernard, an impressionist painter and friend of Van Gogh, described the burial in a letter:

His brother, Theodore van Gogh was there together with Dr Gachet... The coffin was already closed, and I arrived too late to see again the man who, four years before, had left me with great expectations...

In the room where his body lay, all his last pictures hung on the walls as a halo for him, and the greatness of genius that radiated from them made his death all the more painful to us artists who were there. The coffin was covered with a simple white cloth and there were many flowers on it, sunflowers that he loved so much, yellow geogins, all kinds of yellow flowers were everywhere. As you must remember, it was his favorite color, a symbol of the light he dreamed of, both in people's hearts and in works of art.

Next to him on the floor, pëopposite the coffin, was his easel, portable bench, and his brushes.

Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo remained inseparable even in death. Out of pain and sadness, Theo died six months later. Theo's wife, now a widow Jo, remained the only family member who made it possible for Vincent van Gogh's works to be known around the world. And the success she achieved, of course, has gone down in history today.

37 years old, passed away at the same age as the Renaissance master, Raphael, Vincent van Gogh, symbol of post-impressionism, meteor of world art, during his life he failed to get the fame and recognition he deserved. Out of over 900 works he sold only one painting, Red Vineyards in Arl, which is in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Today, his works are the most viewed, admired, appreciated around the world, and the sunflower paintings continue to amaze humanity with their divine sadness, which reflect the mortal condition of man, brought to life by God through the sun, our light. eternal, given to us through art. / "ExLibris" newspaper/