Wheatfield With Crows

Artist: Vincent van Gogh
Title: Wheatfield with Crows
Media: Oil painting on double square canvas

Dimensions: 50.2 cm x 103 cm (19.9 in x 40.6 in)
Date: July 1890

Artist Information:

Vincent Willem van Gogh, born March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890 was a post-Impressionist painter of Dutch origin whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.

Artist Statement: 
"They depict vast, distended wheatfields under angry skies, and I deliberately tried to express sadness and extreme loneliness in them"

"I am almost certain that these canvases illustrate what I cannot express in words, that is, how healthy and reassuring I find the countryside."
  
Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end.

Background Information on Piece:   One of van Gogh's most famous paintings, it was made in the final weeks of his life and is subject to the most speculation of any of his works.
 During his time in Auvers, van Gogh painted numerous landscapes in the same size as above on elongated canvases.  Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of the crow: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything. The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird."

Connection to theme:  The reason I chose Van Gogh for the first piece in this exhibit is mainly the brand recognition.  Van Gogh's signature style is instantly noticed by practically anyone who has seen a painting, but still carries much significance despite being wildly popular.  The style exhibited here, known as impressionism, manages to evoke an array of emotions through a simplified landscape.  The path leading to nowhere gives "a heightened sense of isolation", and the dark clouds and murky sky compliment the feeling of uncertainty and loneliness.  This painting was made during the final weeks of Van Gogh's life, and is argued by many to be his last work.  Knowing this was made by Van Gogh in the final moments of his life make the themes of death become so much more alive, epitomized with the birds representing death, rebirth, and freedom.

Van Gogh is perhaps the most accessible choice to introduce the unfamiliar to our theme, Landscape of the Mind.  The medium through which Van Gogh chose to express himself represents his personality and arsenal of emotions felt at the time, effectively capturing an emotion in time forever.