Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing
This 2015 documentary is the latest in the Exhibition on Screen series the Fine Arts Theatre has been hosting, and it’s a worthy companion to the theater’s 2017 animated hit Loving Vincent. Bringing Van Gogh’s artwork to life, Loving drilled down on his last years in Arles, France, and toyed with the theory that he was murdered. The documentary provides a wider view of the artist’s life and influences, a compact and engaging class in the origin of Van Gogh’s unique vision and how to put his art in the context of his daily struggles. And there’s no murder to solve.
Unless you’re an art historian, A New Way of Seeing is guaranteed to tell you things you didn’t know about Van Gogh and his family. (A great grandson of Vincent’s brother Theo is interviewed.) It’s based on a comprehensive new presentation of the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. (Just watching the process of hanging the show and restoring one painting is fascinating.) The chief experts are the many curators and scholars who work for the museum and who remain excited by these 19th century works more than 130 years later.
The usual stories — poverty, mental instability, the ear cutting — are included in the film’s largely chronological recounting of Van Gogh’s rocky life, but none gets more attention than the many lesser episodes that were equally if not more important to his art. The museum also holds a treasure trove of Van Gogh’s letters, many of them illustrated with drawings, and excerpts are performed to help humanize the artist. Silent reenactments by actor Jamie de Courcey, a ringer for Van Gogh, are well staged.
Among the many Exhibition on Screen documentaries seen so far at the Fine Arts, Vincent Van Gogh is among the broadest, covering the artist’s entire life and oeuvre. Despite the title there’s not really a “new way” of viewing the artist herein, and its reliance on a single living artist to talk about the creative process seems a bit short-sighted.
But given the wider culture’s tendency to turn Van Gogh into a series of stormy dramas, A New Way’s sober, steady approach can be appreciated. It is limited to the Van Gogh Museum’s own collection, so Starry Night and some other familiar pieces are missing, but they’re more than made up for by the abundance of lesser known works, including the painting Van Gogh was working on the morning before he died. Few artists left a legacy as potent and vibrant as Van Gogh, a point the film makes colorfully clear.
Grade: B. Not rated but PG equivalent. Available July 24-August 6 via the Fine Arts Theatre’s Virtual Cinema streaming service.
(Photos courtesy of Exhibition On Screen.)
