Staff Picks
Van Gogh and His Inspirations: Artistic Cultivation
- Chantal W.
- Friday, October 04, 2019
Collection
Check out this list of companion titles for the Columbia Museum of Art's upcoming exhibition: Van Gogh and His Inspirations (October 4, 2019 - January 12, 2020).
This list includes both books about Van Gogh, titles that inspired the artist and title inspired by the artist, setting and time period.
Landmarks of Western Art a Journey of Art History Across the Ages. Impressionism and Post-impressionism
Published in 2006
This episode also features the work of Van Gogh and Degas, and explores such masterpieces as The Sunflowers, La Grande Jette, and The Dancing Class.
Van Gogh and Nature
Published in 2015
"The celebrated painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) had a lifelong fascination with the natural world. He spent his youth in rural Holland, and the country's flat landscapes, trees, flowers, and birds would feature in his early art. After he moved to Paris, he encountered new radical thinking about art and humans' changing relationship with nature. Later, in Provence and Auvers, he discovered unfamiliar terrain, flora, and fauna that further influenced his artistic ideas and subject matter. Van Gogh's images of such diverse environments reflect not only his immediate surroundings but also the artist's evolving engagement with nature and art. Van Gogh and Nature is an eye-opening new catalogue that chronicles the artist's ongoing relationship with nature throughout his entire career. Among the featured works are Van Gogh's drawings and paintings, along with related materials that illuminate his reading, sources, and influences. Vivid color photography and explanatory texts based on new research by the authors clarify a central theme of Van Gogh's oeuvre. "-- Provided by publisher.
Van Gogh at Work
Published in 2013
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is often considered to be a genius in a class of his own, an exceptional self-taught artist who paid little attention to the art world around him. In reality, Van Gogh learned extensively from others, exchanged ideas with his contemporaries, and often made use of prevailing methods and techniques to hone his skills. This book explores the workmanship behind his artistry. The reader follows Van Gogh's quest to perfect his skills and the way he adopted various drawing and painting techniques; acquired information about materials; learned about the physical characteristics of canvasses, paint, paper, chalk, and other materials; how he approached working on paper and canvas and which factors influenced his working practice. Showing his work alongside that of other artists demonstrates the degree to which he followed examples set by his contemporaries. Van Gogh's working methods are explored along with his most famous works, addressing topics as the use of a perspective frame, color theory, the influence of contemporaries and the famous repetitions of a theme as in the Sunflowers and the Bedroom series.
Vincent & Theo
Published in 2005
This is a passionate story of an obsessive artist driven by inexorable demons and his alternately devoted and despairing younger brother, who seems unable to live with him or without him.
19th Century Art
A Beginner's Guide
Published in 2014
Munch's The Scream. Van Gogh's Starry Night. Rodin's The Thinker. Monet's Water Lilies. Constable's landscapes. The 19th century gave us a wealth of artistic riches so memorable in their genius that we can picture many of them in an instant. At the time, however, their avant-garde nature was the cause of much controversy. Professor Laurie Schneider Adams vividly brings to life the paintings, sculpture, photography and architecture, of the period with her infectious enthusiasm for art and detailed explorations of individual works. Offered fascinating biographical details and the relevant social, political, and cultural context, the reader is left with a deep appreciation for the works and an understanding of how revolutionary they were at the time, as well as the reasons for their enduring appeal.
Impression
Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890
Published in 2000
The "point" of Impressionist art was to capture the fleeting moment, the transient effect of a certain place, person or time. Impressionist artists worked on site with speed and directness, hoping to distinguish their works with a new freshness, immediacy, and truthfulness. Yet the paintings they exhibited were in fact almost always completed in the studio later. This beautifully illustrated book investigates for the first time works that might truly be called Impressions--paintings that appear to be rapid transcriptions of shifting subjects but were nonetheless considered finished by their makers. Renowned Impressionist scholar Richard R. Brettell identifies and discusses Impressions by some of the best-known artists of the period, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Morisot, Degas, Pissarro, and Caillebotte. The book surveys the various practices of individual artists in the making, signing, exhibiting, and selling of Impressions. Brettell discusses the pictorial theories behind the paintings, the sales strategies for them, and the various forms they took, including works completed in one sitting, "apparent" Impressions, and repeated Impressions. In a concluding chapter, the author considers a small group of works by Vincent van Gogh, who painted with an almost fanatical rapidity and was the only major post-Impressionist painter to push the aesthetic of the Impression even further.
Post-Impressionism
Published in 2014
Whilst Impressionism marked the first steps toward modern painting by revolutionizing an artistic medium stifled by academic conventions, Post-Impressionism, even more revolutionary, completely liberated color and opened it to new, unknown horizons. Anchored in his epoch, relying on the new chromatic studies of Michel Eugn̈e Chevreul, Georges Seurat transcribed the chemist's theory of colors into tiny points that created an entire image. With his heavy strokes, Van Gogh illustrated the midday sun, whilst Cžanne renounced perspective. Rich in its variety and in the singularity of its artists, Post-Impressionism was a passage taken by all the well-known figures of 20th century painting - it is here presented, for the great pleasure of the reader, by Nathalia Brodskaa̐.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Published in 2009
Wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years, Edmond Dantès escapes to the island of Monte Cristo. What awaits him there is a fortune in gold--and a new identity with which to pursue his revenge and redemption.
Hokusai
Published in 2014
Without a doubt, Katsushika Hokusai is the most famous Japanese artist since the middle of the nineteenth century whose art is known to the Western world. Reflecting the artistic expression of an isolated civilization, the works of Hokusai - one of the first Japanese artists to emerge in Europe - greatly influenced the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, such as Vincent van Gogh. Considered during his life as a living Ukiyo-e master, Hokusai fascinates us with the variety and the significance of his work, which spanned almost ninety years and is presented here in all its breadth and diversity.
Vincent and Theo
The Van Gogh Brothers
Published in 2017
"The true story of the relationship between brothers Theo and Vincent van Gogh"-- Provided by publisher.
Vincent
Published in 2014
"The turbulent life of Vincent van Gogh is a constant source of inspiration and intrigue for artists and art lovers. In this beautiful graphic biography, artist and writer Barbara Stok documents the brief and intense period of creativity Van Gogh spent in Arles, Provence. Away from Paris, Van Gogh falls in love with the landscape and light of the south of France. He dreams of setting up an artists' studio in Arles - somewhere for him and his friends to paint together. But attacks of mental illness leave the painter confused and disorientated. When his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin refuses to reside permanently at the Yellow House, Van Gogh cuts off part of his ear. The most notorious event of art history has happened - and Van Gogh's dreams are left in tatters. However, throughout this period of intense emotion and hardship, Vincent's brother Theo stands by him, offering constant and unconditional support. Stok has succeeded in breathing new life into one of the most fascinating episodes of art history." --Publisher description.
Lust for Life
Published in 1984
A fictional account of the life of Vincent van Gogh, the tormented genius who put so much of himself into his art that he found it difficult to maintain himself in ordinary society.
Van Gogh on Art and Artists
Letters to Emile Bernard
Published in 2013
These letters, written from 1887 to 1889, are among the most important and relevant sources of insight into van Gogh's life and art. 23 missives, accompanied by reproductions of a number of his major paintings and facsimiles from his letters, radiate their author's impulsiveness, intensity, and mysticism. Chronology. Select Bibliography. Index. 32 full-page black-and-white illustrations.