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| From Tate Modern's timeline of modern art. |
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about van Gogh's placement in the timeline of art history. He's kind of wedged in there, really... on the verge of absolute modernity, but still somewhat shackled to the old guard of artists in Western history, particularly weighed down by the Impressionists.
This is especially evident in the London collections. Though the photo above is from Tate Modern, this gallery doesn't actually feature van Gogh on its walls. Rather, van Gogh pops up in the National Gallery, at the chronological end of the gallery's vast collection of paintings ranging from the 13th to the 19th centuries. In a way, this is baffling. Van Gogh's letters reveal him to have been a thoroughly modern artist with his own theories on colour and portraiture, yet so often he is regarded in the framework of the Impressionists and the rest of European art from the Renaissance onward.
It seems strange that he would be featured on the modern art timeline at Tate, yet you will not find his work on the walls of the gallery itself.
Sometimes I marvel over the lack of adequate bibliography regarding van Gogh and his letters and theories concerning modern art. So much of the written work on van Gogh is biographical, with an inordinate amount of focus on his supposed madness. It makes me wonder if my perceived lack of correspondence-based research on van Gogh's theories concerning art could have to do with his placement in this overall art-historical timeline. Even though van Gogh is undoubtedly one of the most popular and recognisable artists in the history of Western art, is it possible that in some sense, he has fallen through the metaphorical cracks?
Or perhaps this line of thought just reinforces the inadequacy of labels such as Post-Impressionist or Modernist and highlights their failure to fully appropriate an artist's place in history.
