This article sounds unnecessarily biased. All art has stylistic and thematic influences. Nothing in Van Gogh's experimentation with or usage of Japanese elements looks egregious to me.
> Ultimately, however, the Japan-as-inspiration-narrative collapses under the weight of van Gogh’s staggering range. While many of the portraits from this period incorporate the cropped perspectives and jagged linearity in Japanese woodcuts of aristocrats and courtesans, they just as often borrow heavily from the hyper-individualized, introspective examples of the Dutch Golden Age portraiture of Rembrandt and Vermeer, painters van Gogh had long admired.
Some of it involves tracing the originals in a fair amount of detail. But that it seems that just what he wanted: the exact picture with its essential forms in the same places and proportions, but with his style over it, making possible an A-B comparison. There is a method to it.
I don't think there has to be a method for every little thing he did. Much of it isn't "production" that he was selling. He made a copy of something and it's still around, including some clumsy ones, like this one which does not have the energy of the original.
-> Nothing in Van Gogh's experimentation with or usage of Japanese elements looks egregious to me.
Can't read the article at work. But they hosted a exhibit on this subject at Tokyo where I saw some work of his. And this was my impression. It is closer to a "experimentation".
> Having never visited Japan, he had, at best, a superficial knowledge of its culture and its people. This ignorance freed him to imagine Japan as a utopian space where religious feeling, immersion in the natural world, and the making of art formed a single, interdependent state of being.
The letters are fascinating and totally worth a read. There's one letter in which he simply says (to his brother, IIRC, and I paraphrase): "a painter must, above all, paint well". It struck me as a very Zen-like observation.
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[ 38.3 ms ] story [ 900 ms ] thread> Ultimately, however, the Japan-as-inspiration-narrative collapses under the weight of van Gogh’s staggering range. While many of the portraits from this period incorporate the cropped perspectives and jagged linearity in Japanese woodcuts of aristocrats and courtesans, they just as often borrow heavily from the hyper-individualized, introspective examples of the Dutch Golden Age portraiture of Rembrandt and Vermeer, painters van Gogh had long admired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_works_of_Vincent_van_Gog...
https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-francois-millet/the-sower-18...
Can't read the article at work. But they hosted a exhibit on this subject at Tokyo where I saw some work of his. And this was my impression. It is closer to a "experimentation".
Oh, so he nailed it anyway, basically.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Père_Tanguy
https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/père-tanguy
"Almond blossoms" is really beautiful, and indeed very reminiscent of cherry blossoms. I like its bittersweet background story a lot.