5 ms·

For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but t

by spaceman_2020 3y ago

For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but the perspective being off feels a little...amateurish? Or is that an intentional choice? If it is, would love to know the 'why' of it

padolsey 3y ago
AFAIK his paintings were never intended to be 'realistic' in the sense we may value, but instead: symbolic. He played with color, intensity, and perspective, expressing vast emotion, and in some cases, turmoil. His mental health and state changed throughout his life which you can almost "see" evolving through his art as he aged. He's incredible to read about - https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/vincents-illness-and-the-healing-power-of-art https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/vinc... EDIT: I find this really interesting: a visual timeline of how his relationship with alcohol changed his artistic style in various phases of his life: https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/536428/fpsyt-11-00685-HTML-r1/image_m/fpsyt-11-00685-g003.jpg https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/536428/fpsyt-11-0...
strobe 3y ago
'perspective' it's just a tool in toolbox of creativity and you can play with it whatever you think would be appropriate to archive your goals.
gumby 3y ago
I used to think “painting is obsolete since we have photographs”. I later came to realize that paintings can show things photographs can’t, often much more. Every time you “say” (express) something you are making choices: emphasizing some things and glossing over others. Something strange happens to you but when you tell me about it you skip the extraneous details and focus on what reinforces your point. Taking a photograph, even if not edited (cropped, lighting changed, etc), and even if spontaneous or lucky, is as much about what is not in the frame as what is. In a good movie, we don’t have to wait while the character goes to the bathroom, or while they drive to the store. We just get the part of the story that matters (this is Chekhov’s gun). All that is true of a painting, but like a story you can make lots of edits, pulling things literally into the frame that are metasyntactic, that a camera would never see. In a way the sharp literalism of a photo is much too limiting, as it tunes your visual system to focus on the image itself more than what might be expressed.
- pluijzer 3y ago
  And even with just images. Last winter a saw two horses in snowy hills. It was a beautiful image. I tried to capture it with my camera but couldn't. The hills were too flat, the snow didn't have the blue hue from my memory and the horses didn't have such a wild manes. Maybe the picture I took was a more realistic representation of reality but it did not capture what I expirienced. Stiqll think of painting it.
larata_media 3y ago
I can’t speak on his behalf, but I can speak on my own experiences in creating art. It could be something as simple as that whatever you create is not always intended to be a great work, but rather it starts out as an experiment to teach yourself something, or learn a technique, and you work on it so much that you enjoy it, and it eventually becomes something. Artists aren’t really concerned with perfection all the time, sometimes we’re just discovering something in the craft.
fipar 3y ago
noob here too, but I wanted to share what I found in one of the descriptions (“The bedroom”, which I chose while skimming through the thumbnails after reading your comment): “The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print”
jontopielski 3y ago
Van Gogh was heavily inspired by Japanese woodprints, which often utilized 1-point perspective, leading to a sort of "flat" look. When it comes to his understanding of perspective, Van Gogh was so obsessed with realism that he never drew from imagination and even used/invented his own physical perspective grid to check his work. And for why his work might appear "amateurish": this was a deliberate style choice by Van Gogh. He was a person who wanted to disguise his expertise. In one of his letters, he notes to a fellow artist that he wants his work to draw people in who "swear he has no technique" and be so "savant" that his work almost appears naive and does not "reek of its cleverness". He's trying to fool us.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  Its worth bringing up that his shaky mental state was probably very influential on his work.
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  >He was a person who wanted to disguise his expertise He didn't have expertise. Maybe you are thinking of Picasso?
diego_moita 3y ago
Well, you are right. When it comes to drawing Van Gogh isn't really "a master". He began painting very late in life, didn't have a long apprenticeship and his career lasted just 10 years. Also, he lived in a cultural context (post-impressionism) that was moving away from classical notions of drawing and composition. Besides, he wasn't the kind of guy that would spend days or weeks or months in a painting. Most of his paintings were the work of one day or afternoon on the field or beach, he wanted that quick burst of expression. That's why he was so prolific. Think jazz improvisation, not classical music composition. The greatness of his work comes from the vibrant use of colour and brushwork, not drawing and composition.
jamal-kumar 3y ago
I don't really think I got it until I saw one in person. It was only a faily small piece but the guy really gobbed so much paint on there that it looked like the flowers on it were real and sticking out of the painting. It was really quite impressive and I don't think I've seen anything quite like it since. I think you could probably label the whole field of post-impressionism as just being smudgy or whatever, and it is a really easy style to copy (People have been doing it for like 100+ years now) so I can see where the idea that it's amateurish comes from. But you have to understand it came from a time where people would really deride your work if it didn't fit along established lines and that people like him really pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable to call "art" in their contemporary time.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  I did not understand modern art until I saw it in the way people from that era would have seen it. I was on Day 7 of a vacation in St. Petersburg and we'd gone from gallery to gallery for nearly a week, covering art from the 14th century onwards. After about the 10,000th realistic painting with vaguely mythological/religious themes, it was simply exhausting. And then we entered a room that housed Matisse's 'The Conversation' and it took my breath away. A gigantic, bright blue painting in an old Russian palace after a week of gallery hopping...it was absolutely majestic. I can only imagine the impact something like that must have had on people who had known nothing but the same old realistic style. What throws me about Van Gogh, though, is that unlike Matisse, he's not entirely modern or abstract - he's still trying to capture some semblance of reality, and he's even making an attempt at realistic perspective, but something is just off. I admire the style, but I could never come to grips with what he's trying to do (or not trying to do) with his perspectives.
bazoom42 3y ago
It is definietely intentional, since some of the earlier and less expressionist drawings use classical perspective.
timacles 3y ago
The goal of art is not to follow rules. That’s why you have all these books that are the “art and science” of this and this. When you follow strict rules you have science, but to make art you have to stop following rules. We’re several hundred years past that anyway, with Picasso and those random paint splatter paintings. But to give the science explanation, Van Gogh made impressionist paintings, the goal of which is to create and ambiance, an atmosphere of an impression the artist felt when creating the painting. Finally, if you study great art you’ll see none of them have correct perspective. Van gogh just shoved it in your face. But having 100% correct perspective is a very amateur quality in itself
jhallenworld 3y ago
I highly recommend this long video: "Waldemar On The Life Of Vincent Van Gogh" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=365r2m7_B10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=365r2m7_B10 Waldemar is awesome, Van Gogh's life is much more interesting than I ever thought. Also highly recommend all of Waldemar's other "Perspective" videos. You will no longer be a noob. These are definitely from his perspective- it's all about Mary Magdalene with Waldemar.

padolsey 3y ago

AFAIK his paintings were never intended to be 'realistic' in the sense we may value, but instead: symbolic. He played with color, intensity, and perspective, expressing vast emotion, and in some cases, turmoil. His mental health and state changed throughout his life which you can almost "see" evolving through his art as he aged. He's incredible to read about - https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/vincents-illness-and-the-healing-power-of-art https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/vinc... EDIT: I find this really interesting: a visual timeline of how his relationship with alcohol changed his artistic style in various phases of his life: https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/536428/fpsyt-11-00685-HTML-r1/image_m/fpsyt-11-00685-g003.jpg https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/536428/fpsyt-11-0...

strobe 3y ago

'perspective' it's just a tool in toolbox of creativity and you can play with it whatever you think would be appropriate to archive your goals.

gumby 3y ago

I used to think “painting is obsolete since we have photographs”. I later came to realize that paintings can show things photographs can’t, often much more. Every time you “say” (express) something you are making choices: emphasizing some things and glossing over others. Something strange happens to you but when you tell me about it you skip the extraneous details and focus on what reinforces your point. Taking a photograph, even if not edited (cropped, lighting changed, etc), and even if spontaneous or lucky, is as much about what is not in the frame as what is. In a good movie, we don’t have to wait while the character goes to the bathroom, or while they drive to the store. We just get the part of the story that matters (this is Chekhov’s gun). All that is true of a painting, but like a story you can make lots of edits, pulling things literally into the frame that are metasyntactic, that a camera would never see. In a way the sharp literalism of a photo is much too limiting, as it tunes your visual system to focus on the image itself more than what might be expressed.

pluijzer 3y ago
And even with just images. Last winter a saw two horses in snowy hills. It was a beautiful image. I tried to capture it with my camera but couldn't. The hills were too flat, the snow didn't have the blue hue from my memory and the horses didn't have such a wild manes. Maybe the picture I took was a more realistic representation of reality but it did not capture what I expirienced. Stiqll think of painting it.

larata_media 3y ago

I can’t speak on his behalf, but I can speak on my own experiences in creating art. It could be something as simple as that whatever you create is not always intended to be a great work, but rather it starts out as an experiment to teach yourself something, or learn a technique, and you work on it so much that you enjoy it, and it eventually becomes something. Artists aren’t really concerned with perfection all the time, sometimes we’re just discovering something in the craft.

fipar 3y ago

noob here too, but I wanted to share what I found in one of the descriptions (“The bedroom”, which I chose while skimming through the thumbnails after reading your comment): “The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print”

jontopielski 3y ago

Van Gogh was heavily inspired by Japanese woodprints, which often utilized 1-point perspective, leading to a sort of "flat" look. When it comes to his understanding of perspective, Van Gogh was so obsessed with realism that he never drew from imagination and even used/invented his own physical perspective grid to check his work. And for why his work might appear "amateurish": this was a deliberate style choice by Van Gogh. He was a person who wanted to disguise his expertise. In one of his letters, he notes to a fellow artist that he wants his work to draw people in who "swear he has no technique" and be so "savant" that his work almost appears naive and does not "reek of its cleverness". He's trying to fool us.

me_me_me 3y ago
Its worth bringing up that his shaky mental state was probably very influential on his work.
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
>He was a person who wanted to disguise his expertise He didn't have expertise. Maybe you are thinking of Picasso?

diego_moita 3y ago

Well, you are right. When it comes to drawing Van Gogh isn't really "a master". He began painting very late in life, didn't have a long apprenticeship and his career lasted just 10 years. Also, he lived in a cultural context (post-impressionism) that was moving away from classical notions of drawing and composition. Besides, he wasn't the kind of guy that would spend days or weeks or months in a painting. Most of his paintings were the work of one day or afternoon on the field or beach, he wanted that quick burst of expression. That's why he was so prolific. Think jazz improvisation, not classical music composition. The greatness of his work comes from the vibrant use of colour and brushwork, not drawing and composition.

jamal-kumar 3y ago

I don't really think I got it until I saw one in person. It was only a faily small piece but the guy really gobbed so much paint on there that it looked like the flowers on it were real and sticking out of the painting. It was really quite impressive and I don't think I've seen anything quite like it since. I think you could probably label the whole field of post-impressionism as just being smudgy or whatever, and it is a really easy style to copy (People have been doing it for like 100+ years now) so I can see where the idea that it's amateurish comes from. But you have to understand it came from a time where people would really deride your work if it didn't fit along established lines and that people like him really pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable to call "art" in their contemporary time.

spaceman_2020 3y ago
I did not understand modern art until I saw it in the way people from that era would have seen it. I was on Day 7 of a vacation in St. Petersburg and we'd gone from gallery to gallery for nearly a week, covering art from the 14th century onwards. After about the 10,000th realistic painting with vaguely mythological/religious themes, it was simply exhausting. And then we entered a room that housed Matisse's 'The Conversation' and it took my breath away. A gigantic, bright blue painting in an old Russian palace after a week of gallery hopping...it was absolutely majestic. I can only imagine the impact something like that must have had on people who had known nothing but the same old realistic style. What throws me about Van Gogh, though, is that unlike Matisse, he's not entirely modern or abstract - he's still trying to capture some semblance of reality, and he's even making an attempt at realistic perspective, but something is just off. I admire the style, but I could never come to grips with what he's trying to do (or not trying to do) with his perspectives.

bazoom42 3y ago

It is definietely intentional, since some of the earlier and less expressionist drawings use classical perspective.

timacles 3y ago

The goal of art is not to follow rules. That’s why you have all these books that are the “art and science” of this and this. When you follow strict rules you have science, but to make art you have to stop following rules. We’re several hundred years past that anyway, with Picasso and those random paint splatter paintings. But to give the science explanation, Van Gogh made impressionist paintings, the goal of which is to create and ambiance, an atmosphere of an impression the artist felt when creating the painting. Finally, if you study great art you’ll see none of them have correct perspective. Van gogh just shoved it in your face. But having 100% correct perspective is a very amateur quality in itself

jhallenworld 3y ago

I highly recommend this long video: "Waldemar On The Life Of Vincent Van Gogh" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=365r2m7_B10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=365r2m7_B10 Waldemar is awesome, Van Gogh's life is much more interesting than I ever thought. Also highly recommend all of Waldemar's other "Perspective" videos. You will no longer be a noob. These are definitely from his perspective- it's all about Mary Magdalene with Waldemar.