User:Ceoil/VvG

Lifetime

 * Irses shown May 1888, Starry Night September 1889 (McQuillan p 72)
 * Ten paintings at the Independants, spring 1890 (McQuillanp 72)
 * Six works sent to Les XX, Brussels Jan 1890. Anna Boch ( McQuillan, also p 137) (sister of Eugene) buys The Red Vineyard that November (p 72)
 * Hung alongside Seurat and Signac by Andre Antoine in 1887 (p 305 Sund) Tanguay collected a few (when?)
 * Octave Mirbeau, 1891, writes that Vincent's suicide was "infinitely sadder loss for art...even though the populace has not crowned to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived" (Sund p 305)
 * Albert Aurier - "violence, naivete, and "suggestions of drunken madness" (Sund p 307)
 * "fire, intensity, sunshine", Aurier, "Le Moderniste, 1889 (Sund p 307)
 * Included with Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec etc at Les XX. Anna Boch @ 400 francs, Monet compliments Vincent's sunflowers as best on show to Theo (Sund p 309)

Posthumous popularity

 * But VVG had links to art world, art deal brother who also supported him financially, other well connected supporters, and some showings (gen)
 * Even while alove Aurier: romanticising - "age old fraternity of visionaries whose flights of creative fancy [can be] ascribed to loss of sanity". View point is adapted by later critics, who emphasise "lunatic", "wildly enthralling" aspect (p 308)
 * Death adds to this momentum, but Theo dies. (Sund p 310)
 * Signac arranges posthumous retrospective at 1891 Salon, gains popularity with Symbolists (Sund p 310)

The widespread and popular realisation of his significance in the history of modern art began after his adoption by early 20th-century German Expressionists and later, the Fauves. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, art historians see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence caused by frequent mental sickness. His posthumous reputation grew steadily; a romanticised version developed in the 20 years after his death when seen as an important but overlooked artist compared to other members of his generation. His reputation advanced both with the emergence of the Fauvist movement in Europe and post WWII American respect for symbols of "heroic individualism" that has been attractive to early US modernists and especially to the highly successful abstract expressionists of the 1950s; New York's MOMA launched blockbuster retrospectives early in his rehabilitation, and made large acquisitions. By this stage his reputation was sealed, and the romanticism of his life fitted with the counterculture of the 1960s; many of the forerunners were decision makers in the 1980s art market boom.