Vedasri Siddamsetty

On a trail of popular and influential people of the past, I picked Irving Stone’s book, Lust for Life to read from the local library. The book documents the life of a man who painted the Sunflowers, Starry night, and others fetching a handsome sum of money long after his death. At one point he felt so wretched that he even cut off his own ear, something that one would probably never empathise with especially walking into the immersive experience of Van Gogh paintings that have been doing the rounds in major cities in India. Van Gogh was an impressionist style of painter who brought to the world active art wherein he tried to capture the rhythm of life that he says is found in everything in this world, both living and non-living that is all at one point, one, and connected to God. A short life filled with failure when ending on a high note, of unbridled positivity amongst other things.

Theo, his brother supported him all through his life, while his painter friends whom he met after years of solitude study matched his crazy temperament and filled his head with ideas. As a painter he believed that a painter must read, for only when he learns theories and facts about the thing he paints can he bring in the essence or the spirit of what he tries to paint into the fray. Else painting could be replaced by a photograph that mainly captures what is, painting on the other hand is the lens that shows the reality through the spirit of the painter, where the painter shows his subject a feeling beyond basic reality and then is when a painter is truly successful. The need to capture the essence of his subjects took the Dutch man through a journey across Europe, stopping by in France and finally ending his days in Arles.

The sun is what is said to have motivated him to go to the provencal town and this sun is said to have inspired the yellows in his paintings, a color that was not liberally used in those times. Having Gauguin, Cezante, Rocci for company was simply a time that Paris was buzzing with talent and beauty in the world of art. The struggle of Van Gogh is what comes across, and what is an artist who has not been through his fair share of struggle. An artist should starve till the age of 60 and then he may turn out a decent piece or two he is told. The man and his need to paint, not to sell, but to paint for the sake of painting speaks of his work as his reward, wouldnt Lord Krishna be so proud of a man in France living out the essence of the Gita!

Written in 1934 by Stone, the chronicler of all great artists, Michelangelo’s book that he previously wrote was called Agony and Ecstasy is another one of the many that puts out the process in the creation of art. Tiring as it may have been to read this tome, today Van Gogh’s win seems utterly fair in an unfair life, or rather seeing the joy that his art brings to the world, it is probably more than fair for he has done what he set out to do after his perceived failure in his very many jobs!