The Guggenheim Museum Experience: New York

Guggenheim Museum Experience
The Guggenheim is an internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century. "The Guggenheim Museum is all at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums." (Guggenheim Museum) Visitors can experience special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures by artists and critics, performances and film screenings, classes for teens and adults, and daily tours of the galleries led by experienced curators. "Founded on a collection of early modern masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum today is an ever-growing institution devoted to the art of the 20th century and beyond."(Guggenheim Museum) The permanent collection of the Guggenheim Foundation embodies the institution’s distinctive history. I feel that the story of the Guggenheim collection is among the most diverse collections of art and media mixed together that create a truly remarkable experience to take in . For example, among these are Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective paintings formed around a belief in the spiritual dimensions of pure abstraction. These collections form a unique, shared global collection that reflects the art from the mid-19th century through the present.
My favorite collection while experiencing everything the Guggenheim had to offer, went to the Thannhauser Collection. This exhibition, on view in a dedicated gallery, presents highlights from Justin Thannhauser's collection, also including masterpieces by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh—to the Guggenheim Museum. Out of all these richly talented artist, I would like to focus my attention and share with you the art work of Vincent van Gogh.
"Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, the Netherlands. Beginning in 1869, he worked for a firm of art dealers and at various short-lived jobs. By 1877, while working as an evangelist, he decided to become an artist. Van Gogh admired the work of Jean François Millet and Honoré Daumier, and his early subjects were primarily peasants depicted in dark colors. He lived in Brussels and in various parts of the Netherlands before moving to Paris in February 1886. In Paris he lived with his brother, Theo, and encountered Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. In February of the following year van Gogh moved to Arles, where he painted in isolation, depicting the Provençal landscape and people. During the years preceding his suicide in 1890, Vincent van Gogh suffered increasingly frequent attacks of mental distress, the cause of which remains unclear. " (Guggenheim website)
The first of his work that caught my eye was- "Mountains at Saint-Rémy" (Montagnes à Saint-Rémy), July 1889. Oil on canvas. This was painted when van Gogh was recovering from just such an episode at the hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in the southern French town of Saint-Rémy. The painting represents the Alpilles, a low range of mountains visible from the hospital grounds. In it, "Van Gogh actively painted the terrain and sky with the heavy impasto and bold, broad brushstrokes characteristic of his late work." (Guggenheim website). I love the feeling of soothingness you receive when you stare at this painting. The cool colors of green, blue, browns and white used help enhance that feeling. The mountains are depicted almost in motion, in a flowing drifting manner. I think some symbolization of feeling trapped in the hospital where van Gogh stayed, is lived within this painting. "Van Gogh advocated his paintings from nature rather than inventing a motif from the imagination. On a personal level, he felt that painting outdoors would help to restore his health. Nature had a religious or transcendental significance for van Gogh. Unlike the earlier Impressionists." (Guggenheim Website).

His next piece of work that caught my eye is known as "landscape with Snow" (Paysage enneigé), Late February 1888. Oil on canvas. "Van Gogh left Paris in 1888 to find rejuvenation in the healthy atmosphere of sun-drenched Arles. When he stepped off the train in the southern city, however, he was confronted by a snowy landscape, the result of a record cold spell. Undaunted, van Gogh painted "Landscape with Snow" around February 24, when the snow had mostly melted, just prior to a new inundation. The artist implies the patchy coverage of the snow through daubs of brown paint and by leaving areas of the canvas to the brilliant illumination and feverish colors of the summer harvest paintings van Gogh made later in the year. Here, instead, he presents the looming, purplish light of an impending snowstorm." (Guggenheim website). Once again you'll notice van Gogh's gradation of colors from dark greens and browns framing the foreground to the blue sky in the distance, and through the recession of the road in the snowy landscape. I think this present work shows van Gogh concentrating on the terrain between where he stands and the bright red-roofed cottage in the distance. He paints the scene from a perspective immersed in the landscape, on the same plane as the black-hatted man and bowlegged dog walking along the path. A sense of motion is also expressed in this painting due to his flowing brush strokes.
Vincent van Gogh's last piece that caught my eye was, "First Steps" (After Millet), 1890, oil on canvas. This work of art depicts a child taking it's first steps to its father figure working out in a planting field. There is a lot of happy, pleasant emotion that comes with this painting. "Van Gogh painted twenty-one copies after Millet, an artist he greatly admired. He considered his copies "improvisations" or "translations" akin to a musician's interpretation of a composer's work. He let the black-and-white images—whether prints, reproductions, or, as here, a photograph that his brother Theo had sent, "pose as subject" then "improvised color on it."(Guggenheim website). I just love Vincent van Gogh's brush strokes. I have no idea how he does it, but he just makes the work look so effortless with his brush flow technique. Some of the other Impressionists paint more natural looking settings and I think this is why I like van Gogh at this point. For instance, when I look at the painting below, I wonder if Van Gogh was able to create this masterpiece in an hour? Perhaps two hours, or maybe it took him all morning. If you just look at the paint on the canvas, to me it looks like each brush full of paint fills its space with life. No coming back over a previous brush stroke to change something, not even a second stroke to add depth or shading, everything the artist wanted to do in the scene was done on the first stroke. Absolutely amazing.