The Great Wave Learning from Van Gogh & Hokusai about 19th Century Art

Reconsidering Transcendence in Art Presence or Absence of divine Learning from Van Gogh & Hokusai by Nataša Pantović

The late 1800s was the time of Impressionism as a radical art movement , centered around Parisian painters, the wave that rebelled against classical subject and gave respect to Mother Nature.

Travelling to their thought-form, Vincent van Gogh to the artist friend Emile:

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard, Saint-Rémy, 1889

“But now look, ... you surely can't seriously imagine a confinement like that, in the middle of the road, with the mother starting to pray instead of suckling her child? Those bloated frogs of priests on their knees as though they're having an epileptic fit are also part of it, God alone knows how and why!

No, I can't call that sound, for if I am at all capable of spiritual ecstasy, then I feel exalted in the face of truth, of what is possible, which means I bow down before the study - one that had enough power in it to make a Millet tremble - of peasants carrying a calf born in the fields back home to the farm.

That, my friend, is what people everywhere, from France to America, have felt. And having performed a feat like that, can you really contemplate reverting to medieval tapestries? Can that really be what you mean to do? No! You can do better than that, and know that you must look for what is possible, logical and true.”

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard, Saint-Rémy, 1889

“Now to enlighten you, my dear M. Van Gogh, ... I am searching for and at the same time expressing a general state of mind rather than a unique thought, to have someone else's eye experience an indefinite, infinite impression. To suggest a suffering does not indicate what kind of suffering: purity in general and not what kind of purity. Literature is one (painting also). Consequently, suggested and not explained thought.”

Letter from Paul Gauguin to Theo van Gogh. At this time, Vincent was 36 year old.

The Starry Night Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 & Japanese print Hokusai Great Wave 1833

First seen outside Japan in the 1880s, Van Gogh's brother was one of the first Europeans to collect Japanese prints and has admired Japanese art.

Starry Night (1889), was created while Vincent was a patient at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole Asylum in France 

"The artist always comes up against resistance from nature in the beginning, but if he really takes her seriously he will not be put off by that opposition, on the contrary, it is all the more incentive to win her over - at heart, nature and the honest draughtsman are as one.” Vincent Van Gogh to his brother” “The struggle with nature is sometimes a bit like what Shakespeare calls “the taming of the shrew””. Vincent van Gogh Letter to Theo van Gogh, 1881 in Etten, At this time, Vincent was 28 year old.

My latest podcast is up on the New Books Network website! In it, I interview James Crossland about his history of the various efforts in the West in the 19th century to control war. Enjoy!

Most of us have grown up with Scrooge’s Christmas Eve escapades. We know the plot, the catch phrases, the every “bah, humbugs!” like the back of our hands. The names Ebenezer, Jacob Marley and Bob Cratchit are now as deeply familiar to us as Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty. We know it all. Or do we? What is it about those Victorian names that haunt our yuletide imagination? What are they hiding about the characters we re-invite into our homes every year? And what, moreover, do they say about Dickens’ supposedly simple tale that may not be so simple after all?

The nineteenth century was one of progress in science, but also literature underwent considerable changes. Innovative writers around the world propagated realism and naturalism in their work. An important Danish figure of the movement, who is almost forgotten today although his works were widely read in his time as well as after his early death, was Jens Peter Jacobsen. However, he was much more than just a naturalist writer. His influence is notable in the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, D. H. Lawrence and many others. And yet, who still remembers him outside Scandinavia?

J. P. Jacobsen was a very intelligent young man with a great interest both in natural science as well as in literature. The work of Charles Darwin impressed him and inspired him to disseminate it in Scandinavia through his translations and scientific articles. Also his poems, short stories and novels show the deep impact that the Theory of Evolution left on his mind. His œuvre may be very small because he died already at the age of thirty-eight years, but with its markedly impressionistic language and an extremely precise as well as introspective style it left lasting traces in literature.

Click here to read my portrait of this important and impressive Danish writer.

There are authors who are tremendously famous in their own countries and yet virtually unknown abroad. One of them is the incredibly prolific Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco, first Visconde de Correia Botelho whom I portrayed on my literature blog Edith's Miscellany this week.

His time was the nineteenth century and Romance novels made his fame. Up to this day his work is held in esteem by the Portuguese and some of his novels are even read in school. Two of his principal works - Amor de Perdição (1862; Doomed Love) and Mistérios de Lisboa (1854; Mysteries of Lisbon) - have been adapted for the screen in 2009 and 2010. And yet, only very few of his over 260 books have been translated into English.

Click here to read my portrait of this remarkable Portuguese writer!