THE POTATOE EATERS, OIL ON CANVAS, VAN GOGH MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM(VINCENT VAN GOGH FOUNDATION)
The postimpressionist painter depicts the harsh reality of country life with the course faces and bony hands through his loose brushstrokes. The subject of the painting is a peasant family eating their daily meal. He wanted to show that they had tilled the land themselves with their hand and that they had honestly earned their food. Vincent was a peasant painter who portrayed the peasants in dignity. He painted the peasants in earth colors. To Vincent, the message of the painting was more important than the correct anatomy or technical perfection.
The painting has five subjects; two on the left eating from the steaming hot potatoes and two on the right serving and drinking coffee. The fifth subject is a young girl standing on her feet. Vincent positions her this way to draw the viewer’s attention. In the interior is a window and a door in the background. The table is covered with linen and the clock indicates that it has just turned seven o clock- dinner time. Vincent showed of his skill of painting with the sharp contrast between light and dark using the oil lamp. The face shines in the light while the rest of their bodies is in shadows from the suns setting. Furthermore, the space behind the figures is indeterminate, the perspective is not accurate and the anatomy almost seems like a caricature. The shoulders don’t seem correctly attached to the torso and the cup the man is holding is not rightly sitting in his palm. Vincent’s primary goal was to create an authentic paint that depicted the lives of the peasants. He strives to connect with something deeper about the human condition – seeing the simpler life as more spiritually truthful.
Vincent uses cool gray, green blue colors in the painting which are comparably dark compared to William Adolph’s painting sent to the salon, Songs of Angles,1881. His brother Theo criticized the painting for its inaccurate perspective, the indeterminate space used, the poor anatomy and his use of dark colors.
While paying little attention to detail, Van Gogh emphasizes the light dark effect. Contrasting sharply are the areas lit by the oil lamp, the only source of light in the work. The dark color emphasis the meager living conditions of the peasants and the loose brushstrokes describe the faces and the hand, which are in motion, eating their simple meal. In color, the hands of the peasants are like the potatoes that nourish them.
THE THINKER, AUGUSTE RODIN,1903, BRONZE, RODIN MUSEUM, PARIS
The sculpture was part of the commissioned figures that would be an intricate part of The Gates of Hell. Rodin sought to represent Dante, author of the Divine Comedy, which inspired The Gates of Hell. The subject is a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free thinking man determined to transcend his suffering through poetry. The thinker appears to be in deep introspection; his powerful body suggests a great capacity for action
The Thinker’s pose resembles that of Michelangelo’s in his portrait Lorenzo De Medici. According to one early twentieth century critic, the Thinker embodies both dream and action. The poet appears to be sitting on a rock, his brows hunched forward, brows furrowed, chin resting on his relaxed hand and mouth thrust into his knuckles. In a pensive mood, he observes the figures of those suffering in the circles of hell below. Some scholars suggest that the sculpture was originally meant to represent Dante but the rippled muscles contrast with Dante’s slender and lithe bodies. The plans to open the new museum fell through and Rodin continued to work on the sculpture.
Rodin’s preference of a sculpture’s close-cropped hair reveals Rodin’s rough modelling of the clay model with its creases and indentations. Originally known as The Pot, the name alluded to its depiction of Dante. But its sharp contrast to Dante’s physic suggests that it theorizes Rodin himself pondering over his creation or the biblical Adam considering the sin of his descendants. The name The Thinker is credited to Michelangelo’s sculpture.
As Rodin later noted: what makes the Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted eyebrows, his distended nostrils, and compressed lips but with every muscle of his arms, back and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes. Light is reflected by the smooth surface and diffused by its texture to achieve a lively surface. There is a complete concentration on the muscles which is a visual documentation of the introspection. Like Van Gogh, he was also inspired by the natural world and his sculpture seems to be in motion, as if reaching out to the viewer through the three dimensional space created. Rodin also created a sharp contrast in the texture of the head and the rippled muscled. The right eyebrow is also thicker than the left eyebrow. When light hit the sculpture, the right eye would be darker than the left alluding to the pensive mood.
Influenced by Michelangelo’s expressive power of the male body and the fragmented sculptures of the Greco-Roman but reworked the sculpture to be of modern significance. The narrative derived from Dante’s inferno takes on a universal significance of the human condition; suffering, sin and the power of the human body. It is therefore one of the most famous sculptures in the world serving as a symbol of philosophy and knowledge.