Van Gogh: Fields, The Field with Poppies and the Artists' dispute

Book Description
Vincent van Gogh arrived in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889 to be voluntarily treated for psychiatric illness. Poppyfield was one of the first pictures that the artist painted that year of the countryside surrounding the asylum, and it continues the leitmotif of fields which runs throughout his oeuvre. Van Gogh's mind was rooted in the cycles of nature, from the mythical sower to the flowering corn to the autumnal reaper. What The Poppyfield and the Artist's Protest also reveals is the artistic possibilities hidden in his conception of the landscape, in the perspectival effect of depth and the accentuation of the canvas's surface. More than 50 paintings and drawings by the Dutch artist are represented here, all of them a tribute to van Gogh's idiosyncratic interpretation of the landscape. Additionally, this publication discusses the particular situation of Poppyfield, which was acquired by the Bremen Kunsthalle in 1911 amid the protests of German artists who were against the arrival of French modernism in German museums. Bremen curator Gustav Pauli, with the support of artists like Max Lieberman and Wassily Kandinsky, defended the purchase. I have immersed myself completely in the vast plain of grain fields that stretches to the mountains, a veritable ocean. . . --Vincent van Gogh Edited by Wulf Herzogenrath and Dorothee Hansen. Essay by Roland Dorn. Clothbound, 264 pages, 150 color and 100 b&w

About the Author
Born in 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Holland, Vincent van Gogh began his career in the art trade, working for art dealers in The Hague, London, and Paris. He later worked as a private teacher and Methodist preacher. He travelled to Paris in 1886 and settled in Arles two years later, where he made the acquaintance of Paul Gauguin. Following a nervous breakdown in 1889, he spent a year in a psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy, after which he was treated privately in Auvers-sur-Oise. It was there that he committed suicide, in 1890, following a severe bout of depression.


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Van Gogh made numerous paintings of fields during his stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, including the Field with Poppies which was central to the 2002-2003 exhibition in the Bremen Kunsthalle in Germany. The exhibition's catalog features the paintings and drawings Van Gogh made of fields, which are also the subject of an essay. The remaining four essays delve into the story of the acquisition of the Field with Poppies by the museum in Bremen in 1911; the "artists' dispute", which refers to the outrage among German artists over the high price paid for the painting; and the history of collecting French painting in nine other German museums. Distributed in the US by D.A.P. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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