Hey Blog! I’m rather late uploading this post but it’s all about art, and this time it’s by one of the most famous artists, and it’s got light displays as well!
On Friday 17th, we went to Leicester to see an exhibition on one of the greats of the art world, a painter who did his own style that is famous for bold colour and if he had lived in the present day, would have been in his element painting for Ukraine – Vincent Van Gogh!
Van Gogh, or Vincent as he wanted to be called (“In future, I want to be known as I sign my pictures, that is namely Vincent and not Van Gogh, as they do know how to pronounce it here”), was a painter alive from 1853 to 1890, born in the Netherlands, but he lived a large part of his life in France. His paintings are spectacular and often have swirls of colour, and a lot of light and dark. Living in the 1800s, he knew some of the great impressionist artists, but formed a slightly different branch of his own, with lots of colour (even though he said, “The way to paint is with lots of drawing and little colour, the way not to paint is with little drawing and lots of colour”). He also included natural subjects, including skies, stars, himself, and sunflowers. Though he received little attention during his lifetime, he is now one of the world’s most renowned artists, and one of his paintings would cost about the same as an entire island!
At the moment, there are a few venues across the UK hosting a celebration of his art. We decided to visit one with a friend’s family, but they were ill on the date we had booked. Hopefully we can go with them on another date, but we haven’t planned that yet. The venues – we went to one in Leicester – have a large amount of information on Vincent’s life, from his birth to suicide, and on the most revolutionary revelation – Van Gogh, the master of colour, was probably colourblind! The huge piles of pigment were most likely his way of seeing something that he couldn’t see clearly. But the star of the show was the big display, the place where Vincent’s greatest paintings were projected onto the walls. This was in the big hall, which was in the middle of the route round, and had chairs for visitors to sit on during the c.30 minute show, which was on loop, in which paintings moved, and lights danced on the floor. We also took some pictures:
We watched the show for almost 60 minutes, so once repeated. After this, we left, as the only things after this were a colouring activity – make a copy of a painting, using your own colours – and the VR experience. We didn’t do this, as we will possibly do it another time. However, we did go round to Leicester Museum as we had a good few hours before the train. Hopefully we can arrange that date and go again, as I’d really like to do so!