Loving Vincent (Loving Vincent 12/6, 2017) created a new form of telling a story in oil paintings. The film uses an undelivered letter to link Van Gogh’s last six weeks with the three most important figures in his life, taking the audience back to Europe at the end of the 19th century and accompanying Van Gogh to the end of his life.

The film, which took the team seven years to make. Is based on more than 800 letters Van Gogh left behind. Most of the 800 letters were sent by Van Gogh to his brother Theo. The creative team has created more than 1000 oil paintings in more than 3 years from 125 painters from 15 countries around the world. After the film was finished, the team spent another year turning static images into motion, so every second of the film was made of 12 oil paintings, and more than 65,000 work was made in total. (‘Loving Vincent’, 2017)

In a story sense, the main story is based on the protagonist’s search for the truth of Van Gogh’s death. But in fact, the whole story is traced back through one after another people who have been in contact with Van Gogh. At this point, with the exception of Van Gogh’s brother, no one in Van Gogh’s life had the greatest influence on his life trajectory or painting than Gauguin. Vincent van Gogh, who was born on March 30, 1853, in Gelutzin-Delt, Netherlands, was one of the most famous post-impressionist artists for whom color was the main symbol of expression. (The Van Gogh Gallery, 2018) His best works were all created in less than three years, and this technique is particularly evident in his Sunflower series, in which van Gogh’s brush strokes, symbolism and intense colors, surface tension, and the movement and vibration of forms and lines become more and more passionate.

To the layman, Vincent was always known as a sunflower painter. Like other painters of the time, Vincent painted still lives of flowers. But after practising different flowers, he chose a particular variety: sunflowers. His peers thought sunflowers might be a little rough and indecent. But that’s what Vincent liked. He liked to paint flowers that had already produced seed. 

The Sunflower series began in the summer of 1888, when Van Gogh asked a group of painters to view his salon, but only Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh’s Parisian friend, agreed to come. In August of the same year, for Gauguin’s arrival, he painted his first Sunflowers. He had intended to paint a dozen sunflowers to decorate his rented cottage in Arles for Gauguin’s arrival, but had barely finished painting four when they arrived. Later, with Gauguin’s praise and encouragement, and their brief two-month living together, Van Gogh painted his fifth sunflower. However, shortly after that, the two artists started a quarrel due to the conflict of artistic concepts. Gauguin, who panicked and left because of Van Gogh’s extreme reaction. Became a kind of guilt and yearning in Van Gogh’s heart, this such emotion made him paint the sixth sunflower in January 1889, but he never met Gauguin again. This sixth painting “Sunflower” also became Van Gogh and Gauguin’s friendship sacrifice. The expectation of friendship was too strong, and he placed too much importance on the acquired friendship, so when he was let down by the other side, the resulting pain was fatal to Van Gogh. Van Gogh never recovered from the loss of Gauguin, and two years later, in 1890, he put down his paintbrush, picked up a pistol and took his own life at the age of 37. (‘Loving Vincent’, 2017)

As Van Gogh’s the most famous series and also the most dazzling part in the film, Sunflower breaks the old rules by combining strong contrasting colors and heavy color blocks seamlessly, creating a new contrasting color system, which has a profound impact on the development of art in the future. In yellow and orange, petals and stems are outlined with delicate strokes of green and blue, as is the signature and the center of a flower. The strong color points on the grains have an eye-catching effect, and the delicate strokes try to show the fullness of the disk and the curvaceous texture. And it was, as Gauguin said, “completely Vincent.” (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, 2018)

As the story ferments, the image of Van Gogh, who is difficult to be recognized by the world and is particularly lonely, is slowly exposed. Although the interview type multiple points of view of technique will make film to a certain extent. But it is also in this presentation that the film makes a well-known true event, which is adapted into something more watchable. At the end of the film, in this Starry Night on the Rhone part, Van Gogh is compared to a beautiful starry night. Loving Vincent is mournful but not distressing. It leads the audience into a lonely soul and sees the colorful world under Van Gogh’s pen.

Loving Vincent, as a film about Van Gogh’s story, is actually slightly flawed in its plot. It is not one of the famous in many films that have told the story of Van Gogh’s life. But this film is very special to the team in a different way to show us Van Gogh’s world. The film contains most of Van Gogh’s paintings, various scenes of Van Gogh’s life, and dribs and draws about him. Like when you see the train through the wheat field, when you see Van Gogh’s sky, belong to his room, night view, outdoor cafe, when you see all of these pictures, even though as an outsider, as a person only know Van Gogh’s sunflower, you will still have a kind of art, born from the heart of the moved. And this is what Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings can resonate with us.

Reference:

‘Loving Vincent’ (2017) Wikipedia. Available at: 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_Vincent
(Accessed: 13 May 2021).

Loving Vincent 12/6 (2017) Directed by k. Dorota. [Feature film]. 
Chongqing, Bright East(Beijing) Films Co.Ltd.

The Van Gogh Gallery (2018) VINCENT VAN GOGH BIOGRAPHY. Available at:
https://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/biography.html
(Accessed: 13 May 2021).

Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (2019) 5 things you need to know about Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. Available at:
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-van-goghs-sunflowers
(Accessed: 13 May 2021)

Bioliography:

Roland Holst, R. (1868 – 1938), Vincent [Catalogue of the Van Gogh exhibition in the Kunstzaal Panorama Amsterdam, December 1892]. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Van Gogh, V. Sunflowers [Oil on canvas]. Availale at: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-van-goghs-sunflowers (Accessed: 13 May 2021).