Vincent's room in Arles 1889, Vincent Van Gogh. Oil on canvas (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
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Work description:
The painting is immediately striking in two respects, the great chromatic vivacity and the absence of a correct perspective that the painter, however, knew well through his studies.
There are three versions of the framework. The first in October 1888 kept at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and then two further copies of the same, both made in September 1889 when the painter was in Saint Remy. One of these two copies, the one kept in Paris and presented here, has a smaller size than the original and measures 56.5x74 cm. This version kept at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris was made for his family. The third version is kept in Chicago.
Van Gogh, by painting his room on the first floor of the yellow house in Arles, intended to convey the pleasure of a life lived in a simple, quiet and essential place. The Dutchman looked to Japanese culture and the idea of sober and minimal spaces.
Each part of the room is characterized by a specific color: the floor (light brown), the walls (periwinkle), the window (light green), the chairs (chrome yellow), the bed (ocher) with the blanket (cadmium red). ).
It is from this harmony of colors that the joyful spirit of this interior is born, which seems straight out of a comic.
A year after having painted it for the first time, the painter returns to copy it just as he is interned in the psychiatric hospital of Saint Remy. Vincent clings to a serene memory and replicates it on canvas. In a year his color has become even stronger, intense capable of igniting emotions and for us spectators it becomes a hurricane on a perceptual level.
According to what Van Gogh himself wrote, the goal of the painting was to convey a sense of tranquility and rest. The painter takes us into his small room furnished with a few essential elements. Next to the bed, of disproportionate size, we see a couple of chairs, a table with the objects of the toilet, a coat rack where we distinguish a straw hat, a window just opened, a mirror, two closed doors on opposite sides of the room, the slatted floor.
Finally, on the walls we find what was most dear to Vincent, some paintings and a couple of prints. Behind the headboard of the bed we see a landscape, while on the right wall there is a self-portrait and a portrait; under these two paintings hang two Japanese prints, so loved by Van Gogh.
The painter is therefore telling us that he lives for little, the essential furnishings to rest and wash. The author is not interested in showing us a realistic and plausible reproduction of the room. The perspective and proportions are not respected.
That of the artist is an emotional and affective vision of one's room. Van Gogh points out that he loves to surround himself with beauty, with his own works, those that he probably considered most significant; also Vincent shows us his sources of inspiration, the Japanese prints.
The painting of this simple room makes us reflect on the meaning and significance of the spaces in which we live. The choices of furniture, order or disorder, speak of us, they are objectifications of our being. They are basically the external projection of our internal world.
Van Gogh talked about himself about his life about his memories of his emotions of his own affections.
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