Lately, I am finding it more and more important to surround myself with images. At the moment, I'm working through some self-portraits by van Gogh. They're mere print-offs and taped up in an obvious spot so that each time I walk into a particular room, I am forced to take notice of them. This is helpful as it makes me consider the works whenever I see them and considering that I am currently writing about the works themselves, it's good to have them physically present.
This practice is something I have taken from Vincent himself. There are wonderfully mad accounts of him being a nightmare tenant, hammering new prints up on his walls in the middle of the night, much to his landlady's annoyance. Inconsiderate, perhaps, but the point is the artist made it a point to surround himself with images he loved.
In tandem with this, he also recounts in his letters that he would sometimes scrawl out verses of Scripture in the margins of certain prints, combining text with image in a personal way.
Hanging in that little room will be the prints I got from you, and so I’ll be reminded of you daily – beneath that one after Rosenthal, that monk, I have written ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me – in the kingdom of heaven they do not marry, and are not given in marriage’. Beneath its pendant, The imitation of Jesus Christ (after Ruipérez), I wrote what we used to hear Pa say: ‘Lord, I should so much like to be earnest’….[1]
What a curious way to make a print your own, and to correlate an image with the written word. I think this is a delightful mode of curation.
Even my cat likes the practice, and is especially fond of the portrait of Emile Boch. Evidence:
I've heard lots of post-PhD colleagues say they couldn't stand to think about the artist or artists they focused their research on for sometime after their submission, let alone look at their art. Four + years with a subject will do that to a person, I suppose. But somehow, I'm still okay with Vincent and I think even after I'm done, I'll keep some prints up. Because Vincent was right in his practice: it is important to surround yourself with the images that inspire you.
[1] Letter 112, To Theo van Gogh. Dordrecht, Sunday, 22 and Monday, 23 April 1877.
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