Symposium – Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles

The Autodidacts: from Van Gogh to Pirosmani

service editions — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:24:54 +0000

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while “les refusés” were organizing away from the Salon, there was rising interest in artists considered self-taught, those learning outside the academies and without masters. But the art of autodidacts, also called the “art of the insane”, “art brut”, “primitive” or “naive” art, defies categories and definitions as much as it arouses debate. What modernist preoccupations, from childlike wonder to the primitive, does it echo?

Focusing in particular on two 19th-century autodidacts, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918), and exploring the issues this notion raises today, at this symposium art historians, critics, curators, writers, artists and teachers offered their analysis of self-education from multiple perspectives. The complex figure of the autodidact can enlighten us on our value systems, our approaches to teaching and how recognition is given in a world where different conceptions of culture coexist.

This symposium, organized in September 2019, was the third in a series of conferences conceived by the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles. The first, “Van Gogh—Duchamp: Oil & Water?”, was held in January 2015 and the second, “Van Gogh Pre-Pop”, in March 2017.

Van Gogh Pre-Pop

service editions — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 14:17:47 +0000

“Pop” can mean many things, but it refers above all to the “culture of the greatest number”. Curators, historians, art experts and contemporary artists have used the enormous popularity of Vincent van Gogh as a starting point to study and reflect upon the ways in which mass culture made its way into the work of the Dutch painter and continues to infiltrate it.

Like Gustave Doré or Robert Delaunay before him, Van Gogh was interested in the objects resulting from new technologies in image reproduction in the second half of the 19th century-portfolios, decorative images and illustrated journals-and their pictural universe. He was inspired as much on a formal level as by the content, even when his own art turned towards the avant-garde.

From lithography to pixels, from Van Gogh to Iggy Pop, the proceedings from this second symposium, all informed by the powerful sociocultural weight of the term “Pop”, delve to current issues neglected by a history of art centred around style and form.

After “Van Gogh–Duchamp: Oil and Water?” the symposium “Van Gogh Pre-Pop”, organized in March 2017, is the second opus in a series presented by the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles.

Van Gogh—Duchamp: Oil & Water?

service editions — Mon, 15 May 2017 13:52:51 +0000

Van Gogh and Duchamp: two names, two monuments in the history of twentieth-century art, both of whom seem to be mutually charged with the intensity of a magnet. Or would this be valid only for those imprisoned in clichés?

Conceptual art has established itself up as an antidote to expressiveness. For several decades already, excessive and exalted subjectivity in art has been rejected and denied. But today both emotion and immediacy are seditiously reappearing.

Are the names of Van Gogh and Duchamp synonyms for “hot” and “cold”? One standing for existential agitation, the other for intellectual sovereignty? One for popular (accessible), the other for sophisticated (elitist)? One for “painting”, the other for “anti-painting”? One for pictorial spaces saturated with energy, the other for fetishized objects manipulated with strategic detachment?

“Van Gogh–Duchamp: Oil & Water?” is the first of a series of symposiums devoted to Vincent van Gogh. The proceedings of this colloquium—devised and held in Arles—present contributors’ talks and discussions, juxtaposing historical, cultural and sociological positions, as well as determined artistic approaches and practices. The rich diversity of the iconographic documentation of these proceedings reflects the magnetic attraction of these two great names.