Hollywood Artists Vincent and THEO…AND Essay

Total Length: 1799 words ( 6 double-spaced pages)

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The famous canvasses are omnipresent but usually left in the background, kept in Theo's salon or, strangely, subjected to repeated mutilation: smeared, thrown, smashed to demonstrate their (and the artist's) fragility. In the painting scenes, occasionally the image on the easel fails to match the landscape that Roth-as-van-Gogh is nominally depicting: in the first 1890 painting sequence, a row of trees disappears from the canvas in what appears to be either a gesture of either the artist's madness or the filmmaker's lack of interest.

Tellingly, the only real brushwork in the film is as background for the credits. Brushwork, of course, is where imagery -- the myth of the artist, the "vision" of subject matter -- meets the pragmatic realities of materials and technique. Altman captures the mud of materials and the marketplace alike, and provides a rich and allegorical subject, but I would have liked this film to have explored the interaction between them more rigorously.
Van Gogh as saint and monster and man, as outsider and insider: are we ready? Works Cited Altman, Robert, dir. Vincent & Theo. MGM Home Entertainment, 1990. DVD. Meier-Graefe, Julius. Vincent van Gogh: A biography. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1987. Print. Samuel, Henri. "Van Gogh's ear 'was cut off by friend Gauguin with a sword.'" Daily Telegraph, 4 May 2009. Web. 7 Apr. 2010. " Van Gogh, Vincent, de Leeuw, Ronald & Pomerans, Arnold J. The letters of Vincent van Gogh. Print. Van Gogh Gallery. "Vincent van Gogh: Biography." n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2010. Van Gogh Museum. "Van Gogh and Gauguin: Two Distinct Artists." The Van Gogh-Gauguin….....

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