2005-11-01 - 9:20 p.m.

The van Gogh Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

If it is at all possible for you to see this artwork, do. Not because Van Gogh has become an industry, not because Van Gogh is famous. Because the work is amazing.

Brave the crowds. The unwashed, the blaring I-pod-wearing fatties, the pushy, the respectful, the Kevin-Bacon-listening tour nuts, brave them all for a shot at looking at work that is not good, but great.

The show collects an enormous amount of Van Gogh's drawings in one place, allowing the viewer the luxury of watching his skill develop over ten short years of disciplined practice. The line available in his paintings - the charactered outline - develops first in his drawings. He struggles for it, works towards it, gets it, and then, it dissolves as his markmaking verges on brushwork instead to capture large areas of movement or color in the natural landscape. It dissolves as he dissolves towards the end.

My friend with me kept referring to the drawings insane people make, how they get increasingly scattered, the figure a cumulus of marks as Vincent's figures and landscapes became loose accumulations of marks, loose organizations of lines. A madman, yes, it has been drummed into us - be careful when looking at a new work of art by an untried artist, we may be looking at Van Gogh's ear - still, there have been generation upon generation of mad men and women, and only one Vincent Van Gogh.

He captures emotion in his figure drawings in completely different way than in his paintings - mainly because color is not at his disposal. A pair of drawings highlights this skill - a sorrowful woman, knuckles pressed into her face, a stressed out man, balled fists knuckling into his eyes. Though gesture obscures the faces of each figure, the tension in the lines found, drawn, and redrawn by the artist communicates the inward-looking strain felt by each figure. No release, just, strain, the tension of each figure echoed in the lattice of lines that evoke them.

I believed I could see his struggle with himself, his harsh self-criticism as I looked at is early works. I believed I could see it dissolving as he grew in confidence. Wall text pointed out when he felt his hand had drawn it without guidance.

There was a lot of wall text, romantic quotes from his letters, from other artists...and of course, the audio guide, Kevin Bacon reading from Van Gogh's letters to his brother written at the same time as the work was made. I'm not a fan of these trimmings, I just like looking at the work, seeing what it can tell me. And it tells me alot.

The reed pen he used, he'd let it run all the way out of ink while making his marks. The hand gestures so rapid, dartlike, tips of lines pull one way or another, but never straight, precise. Swirls upon swirls, dots upon dots, especially his later work its as if he's blown something open and can't go back.

There were a few paintings in the show and while they were sculptural masses of paint, they did make me sad. So over-restored they are glossy glossy wet, as if they were painted yesterday. (sigh) Do I trust the restorer and his particulate analysis to believe that these were the colors Van Gogh painted? I don't know. I look for texture, that gesture, that mark again, since in my guts I don't like the high gloss shine under that glass. Still it is a pleasure to see the oils, especially next to the watercolors, which Vincent handled so differently.

He let the medium do the work for him. Economy of brushstroke is the word in his watercolors. Blues bloom and pool in his skies, dashes of solid colors make rooftops and walls of houses. No interference with the drawn line, just shapes of colors uninterrupted by mark. Where in the oils the mark still dominates the color, the toothpastelike texture breaking up fields of color into a drawn surface...In his oils, an area of color becomes an aggregate of marks rather than an uninterrupted field. In the watercolors, the uninterrupted field of color was allowed to happen.

Vincent has influenced me in many ways, some pleasent, some horrid. Our culture still equates madness with creativity, and at the extreme, punishes our most creative thinkers rather than rewarding them. Like Jesus, if Vincent was among us today, he'd be ignored.