Vincent Van Gogh’s Influence in Art
Today, many artists are impacting the field of art through the artworks they create. Most of these artists had a passion for their creations; hence, even after their demise, they still influence contemporary art and artists. One such artist is Vincent Van Gogh. Even though he existed many centuries ago, his art is still influential to today’s artworks and the way artists view beauty and style in the artwork. He produced many paintings and drawings that have been copied by artists today; however, none of his work has been duplicated. His unique artistic life has lived to be an inspiration to existing and upcoming artists since most of them have resolved on including his work in the modern archetype. Thus, even though he existed over a century ago, his work is still being mimicked in today’s artworks.
Vincent was born in 1853 in the Netherlands. He began his artistic career when he was 27 years. It was a simple start, a creative mind that came into ideas of today’s artwork. When he was traveling with Theo to Paris in 1886, he discovered artistic techniques and movements, which he later included in his artwork. Despite that Vincent Van Gogh was epileptic and bipolar, this did not prevent him from making an impact on the field of art today (Bridgwater).
The last two years of his life created the ideal part of art and history in general. This is when Vincent Van Gogh explored and embraced the impressionist and post-impressionist type of work that is still influential to today’s artworks and history of art in general. Initially, Vincent used to create his paintings and drawings from a dark and mute color scheme; however, during his impressionist and post-impressionist artwork, he started creating new and bright palette (Bridgwater). This new artistic creation changed not only Vincent Van Gogh’s artwork but altered even the general history of the artwork. One of the significant paintings that he created during this era, which is still being embraced by contemporary artists, is the Starry Night (Van Gogh and Brock). This painting was established in 1889 and painted with oil on a oil measuring 29 x 36¼ inches. This piece of art justified Vincent’s passion for artwork. He used art to speak his mind and exercise his feelings to the public domain (Tsuji et al. 73).
Vincent Van Gogh was a unique artist of the time. He created his oil and drawings from his thoughts and mind. Starry Night was a painting that depicted Vincent’s feelings to the world. One glance towards this painting, one can easily tell Vincent’s thoughts, fears, feelings, and wishes. He created the Starry Night not only to indicate his death but also to illustrate hope and light at the end of a tunnel. He used this painting to show people that even at the deepest ends of our states of mind, people should show focus and strive to achieve their goals through the cosmic energy left in them (Cornelissen, 702). I believe that through his unique artwork creation, many people today view him as a legend and a fantastic artist.
Van Gogh’s impressionist and post-impressionist artwork are still embraced by famous contemporary artists such as Stefan Duncan, Vitali Komrov, and Lee Tiller. Today, Stefan Duncan is regarded as the American Vincent Van Gogh because of the mimicry artwork from the impressionist and post-impressionist era of Vincent to contemporary impressionist artistry. According to Duncan, he is producing the Squigglism style of art characterized by a brilliant color plethora, commonly known as a whimsical style. Stefan is greatly influenced Vincent’s ancient impressionist artwork; therefore, he copies this work and improves it into the modern concepts of art, to make it more modern. Vincent’s impressionist artwork was made of quick strokes; however, Stefan employs the use of the current techniques to modify the quick strokes into long and curvy lines, to match the contemporary impressionist artwork (Cornelissen, 708). Duncan creates tight color dance swirls all over his paintings and drawing, producing light features with extreme beauty. Beauty is what Stefan Duncan chases to achieve in all his paintings and drawings. This is what Vincent Van Gogh toiled to accomplish during his era as well. Thus, he is influential to contemporary artists, their goals, and their work in general (Tsuji et al. 70).
Vincent does not only influence Stefan but also poses as an idol in Lee Teller’s artwork. Through Teller’s artwork, one can easily conclude that he is a contemporary impressionist trying to continue the work that the master of impressionist Vincent Van Gogh started. Lee Teller tries to let the modern world understand that even though Vincent is no more, it does not imply that impressionist also came to an end. However, he wants to tell the modern artists that impressionism artwork is still active and changing with times and eras. When you look at Teller’s artwork, you will be amazed by the light grasps and color employed in the paintings. If you are looking for excellent impressionism artwork in the contemporary world, Lee Teller can create one characterized by crisp and clean art (Tsuji et al. 65). He creates artworks with undeniable beauty. His work is seen in many exhibitions as well as galleries of the world. Most importantly, his work was influenced by the post-impressionists, and Vincent is one of them.
Vitali Komrov is another artist that shows how Vincent Van Gogh influenced the field of art in the past and today. Vitali created four portrait paintings that illustrated Vincent Van Gogh’s image and self-portraits. Amazingly, one of his paintings portrayed Vincent with a bandaged ear and drew an art to interpret the same. Understandably, Vitali Komrov’s paintings and drawings are similar to Vincent’s, with a slight difference in color and brightness. Vitali’s color is upgraded to the modern twist of impressionists. He creates paintings with bright and candy schemes that make the portraits beautiful and unusual because of the vividness of color and exaggerations (Cornelissen, 706). He has more than a hundred paintings with Vincent Van Gogh’s splendor, making it unbelievable and exciting to look at them. Thus, both Teller and Vitali have copied Vincent’s work but modified it according to their ideas and desires. Therefore, the future of contemporary impressionism seems bright and incredible through the influence of Vincent Van Gogh.
Vincent has not only influenced modern artists but also influenced the world of sculptures through his self-portraits. Jim Pallas is talented in creating sculptures that can accept money. Thus, he utilized one of Vincent Van Gogh’s Portraits to create his works. For instance, when he created a self-portrait with a straw hat on his head, Jim Palla copied the sculpture and modified it into a seven feet tall portrait without the left ear. However, Jim made the right ear as large as possible, allowing money from donations to quickly drop into the head of the sculpture (Tsuji et al. 67). This sculpture holds up to 60 Dollars charitable contributions.
Carlos Zapata creates another sculpture work from Vincent’s influential artwork. He creates sculptures that are whimsical and visually appealing (Cornelissen, 703). These sculptures can be moved by complex mechanics creating a bright, funny, and pleasant movement when in motion. Carlos created a moving sculpture from one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits, where he placed Vincent’s small figure inside the head paints of a giant sculpture. Thus, the statue turns, and the hand cranks whenever the sculpture is moved around.
For sunflower artists, Vincent’s work was influential, accessible, and set the trends of sunflower artwork. Artists today, Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflower, have created evolutions in décor and general art. He inspired and created a pattern of personas and new lifestyles in his paintings, opening a new door and image to the modern sunflower artists (Cornelissen, 700). Thus, today, companies are inspired to use Vincent’s artwork on most of their novelty items, proving that Vincent was and still is an influence on the entire field of art.
Conclusively, there are thousands of artists in the world today. These artists were influenced by past artistic works from famous artists of the time. Vincent Van Gogh is a famous artist from the ancient impressionism and post-impressionism era that has greatly influenced artwork in the contemporary impressionism world. Prominent artists such as Stefan Duncan, Lee Teller, and Vitali Komrov have copied his work and modified it to suit the modern world and artistic requirements. More so, sculptural artists like Jim Palla are refashioning his self-portraits into a fun but useful sculptures such as money receivers, used for charitable donations. Vincent influenced and is still shaping the artistic world even though he died about a century ago.
Works cited
Bridgwater, Patrick. The Expressionist generation and van Gogh. Vol. 8. German Department, Hull University, 1987.
Cornelissen, Joep P. “Portrait of an entrepreneur: Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, and the entrepreneurial imagination.” (2013): 700-709.
Jia, Jia, et al. “Can we understand van Gogh’s mood? learning to infer effects from images in social networks.” Proceedings of the 20th ACM international conference on Multimedia. 2012.
Tsuji, Kinko, and Stefan C. Müller. “The Arts and Beyond.” Spirals and Vortices. Springer, Cham, 2019. 67-87.
Van Gogh, Vincent, and Brock Irwin. Starry Night. Athena Reproductions, 1975.