A Little Bit . . . About the Art of Looking
I recently read a marvelous little book called The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, and in a chapter about art and its effect on how we see a place we might travel to, de Botton focuses on the French region of Provence and the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who painted some of his most brilliant canvases in that landscape.
A cover of the book The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, originally published by Penguin Books in 2003
This extract is taken from a letter from the artist to his brother Theo:
“They [cypresses] are constantly occupying my thoughts. It astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them. The cypress is as beautiful in line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk. And the green has a quality of such distinction. It is a splash of black in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interesting black notes, and the most difficult to get exactly right.”
Vincent van Gogh’s Cypresses (1889), from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
And then there is this quotation this from a letter van Gogh wrote to his sister Willemien:
“The night is even more richly coloured than the day.”
Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889) from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph courtesy of MOMA
And writing again to Theo one day over lunch, the artist states:
“The restaurant in which I am sitting is very strange. It is grey all over . . . a Velazquez grey—as in the Spinning Women—and there is even a very narrow, very fierce ray of sunlight coming through a blind, just like the one that slants across Velazquez’s picture.”
Diego Rodríguez De Silva y Velázquez’s The Spinners, or the Fable of Arachne (1655–1660) from the collection of the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photograph courtesy of the Museo del Prado
Delightful, isn’t it? From here, I went on to draft a new poem, inspired by these readings—a villanelle (although not one that strictly adheres to the rules of the form—I decided to do it a little differently). Here is my latest version:
“It’s Pure Velazquez”
—from a quote by Vincent van Gogh
Of all the colors one can name, it was gray he wished to master.
How many encounters with the Spanish artist’s work had he managed?
A shade of light became the deepest truth he could chase after.
Velazquez ushers one’s gaze to a foreground of women weaving,
their cream-white calves caught in a beam of sun against a wall transformed from drabness.
Of all the colors one can paint, it was gray he’d seemed to master.
Did the Dutch painter’s memory of this scene bring forth an inner smile?
A framed picture brushed the edges of an actual Provence cafe, a summer’s afternoon,
and a shade of light became the deepest truth he could chase after.
He sensed another element at play in the greens of cypress trees, their wind-rushed stirrings;
the night gave up its secrets to his watchful eye (even more vibrant than daylight).
But of all the colors alive before him, it was gray he worked to master.
To do justice to the hues of this terrain meant not only to discover
what had been left behind in others’ attempts—it was to heap its flavors onto our plates too.
A shade of light became the deepest truth he could chase after.
It is the blues (cobalt), yellows (citron), oranges (marigold) I had always imagined him spinning
at his famously impossible pace.
But of all the colors one can imagine, it was gray he sought to master,
a shade of light being the deepest truth he could chase after.
