Vincent Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, Part 2

To express the love of two lovers through a marriage of two complementary colours, their mixture and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of adjacent tones'. To Theo, 1888

Vincent Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, Part 1, at the National Gallery, London.

I just realised that I did not post the second part of this exhibition, so I am doing that now. If you want to see the first post please go here   . As usual, I am repeating the introduction from the first part, if you don't want to see it, skip to the first painting.

This exhibition consists of works that Van Gogh created in the course of two years whilst he lived in Arles and Saint-Remy-de Provence. It was a very productive period of his life where he created some extraordinary and innovative work. Some of these works are among his most famous and beloved creations whilst others are less familiar. What emerges from looking at these works is an intellectual artist of lucid intention, deliberation and great ambition.

Van Gogh varied his approach to style and use of colour to explore wide-ranging emotional and poetic possibilities, often with a literary or artistic source in mind. In aiming to convey meaning rather than accurately record nature, Van Gogh took a free hand in adjusting or recomposing what he observed to achieve his desired effects.

The Trinquetaille Bridge, 1888

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889

View of Arles, 1889

The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Remy), 1889

The Poet (3)

Sunflowers, 1888

Sunflowers, 1888

Oleanders, 1888

Still Life with Coffee Pot, 1888

The Arlesienne, 1890

The Arlesienne, 1890

Landscape with Ploughman, 1889

Landscape at Saint-Remy (Enclosed Field with Peasant), 1889

Landscape from Saint-Remy (Wheatfield behind Staint-Paul Hospital), 1889

 

A Wheatfield with Cypresses, 1889

Long Grass with Butterflies, 1890

Olive Grove with Two Olive Pickers, 1889

Olive Trees, Saint-Remy, 1889

Olive Trees, 1889

The Olive Trees, 1889

Mountains at Saint-Remy, 1889

More of Van Gogh's work in this blog: 

Van Gogh in the Van Gogh Museum  in 2014

Van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum - 2  in 2014, in Amsterdam

Van Gogh - after Millet in 2014, in Amsterdam

Van Gogh and Britain in 2019 at Tate Britain

Kiefer/Van Gogh  in 2015 at the RA

Kiefer/Van Gogh - the drawings  in 2025 at the RA

 

Back in Greece

We are back in Greece and it's wonderful being here. As usual, it took us a few days to get everything sorted but at last, we were able to go for our first swim.

The new planting between the main sea road and the beach is coming along nicely

The entrance to the 'Beach of the Sun'. It's a pay beach, but we go in free because we are residents.

A lot of steps to go down (and up!) - I counted them once, and I think it's 70?

The bourgainvillea not doing that well this year - maybe it's too early in the season.

The beach is packed every weekend (we abstain from coming then) and this lawn fills up with people on their loungers

And here we are, at last! I have missed this. It's 8:30 in the morning and there's not that many people about. Even so, we just manage to get the last umbrella and loungers on the front row which is what I like, 

so that I can look at the sea. It calms me so, it's like meditating.

In the distance, on the right hand corner you can see the marina

We do three short swims. It will take a while to build up to swimming to the net again, as we do every summer. You can see the net that surrounds our beach to stop boats coming in, in the horizon  (I should have zoomed in to take a close up of it). But, we will build up to it, as we do every year.

Zooming in on our left, I see a school bus.

By 11:00 when we leave, the beach is busy. But, nothing, like it will be by 1:00 and up to 8:00 in the evening. It's too busy for me, I like it when it's quiet 

 and here they are, the kids that came on the bus we saw.

There is a lot more to this beach than what I have shown here: there are three bars, one night club, exclusive areas for sitting which cost a lot more, play areas, and lots more. But, we just like swimming, and this is what we do.

Rachel Jones at the Courtauld

Rachel Jones at the Courtauld.

Just two works by Rachael Jones. We had just been to Somerset House to see the M. C. Escher exhibition and popped in at the Courtauld to see these two works as their vibrant colours appealed.

Jones made both same-titled works especially for their location at the Courtauld. She intended them to be in a playful and disruptive dialogue with the formality of the Courtauld's neoclassical building.

Rachel Jones, Struck, 2025, (oil sticks and oil pastel on linen)

Struck, 2025, (oil sticks and oil pastel on linen)

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts (only two works)

I cannot do the Summer Exhibition at the R.A. It's too crowded, there are too many displays, and in order to see what the artwork is and by whom, you have to look in the catalogue. I just find it so frustrating and irritating. We went to see the Michaelina Wautier exhibition which was wonderful, and which I will post on soon, I hope. Ken wanted to look at the Summer Exhibition which he did while I did other things. He came out and talked to me about two artworks which he enjoyed, so I popped in, rushed through,  to have a look at just those two. 

Tim Shaw, Pin It on Them (Associated Artwork from the Installation: Shut it Piggy),  (old pillows and clothes on a steel frame)

Trump and Netanyahu, clasping hands, barbed wire around their wrists

standing on some of the devastation and destruction they have caused.

Michael Sandle, Vipera Palaestinae or Allegory of Consciencelessness in Gaza, (charcoal drawing)

Tony Blair, another facilitator of the genocide in Gaza.

 

Relativity Room at the M.C. Escher exhibition

Relativity Room at the M.C. Escher exhibition

at Somerset House.

The Relativity Room is a tiny fraction of the M.C. Escher exhibition. I do intend to post on the exhibition itself, but I am not sure when I will do so, as I am very behind with my blogging.

But, this was fun, so, because it's a short post, I thought I would do it now.

A small room, and you could either enter it with another person so that you could pose and see the contrast, or look through the window. We looked, marvelled and took photographs.

And, then, they changed places. Amazing.

We were not told how this is achieved, so I had to look it up. 

A relativity room is inded inspired by Escher's impossible architecture, and it achieves its mind-bending illusion by using forced perspective. 

The physics and architecture of the trick rely on a few specific design elements; the room is built with a steep gradient, so that the floor is skewd, it slopes upward; the ceiling is skewed too, sloping downwards so that when you walk from the 'low' side to the 'high' side of the room, you are actually walking closer to the ceiling. Furthermore, there is the checkerboard trick: the floor tiles are painted in a distorted grid: the grid gets smaller toward the far corner to reinforce the false sense of distance and make you believe you are further away.

Wonderful.