VINCENT VAN GOGH: A PAINTER FOR THE AGES

The Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh only lived for thirty -seven years, and only painted for the last eleven years of that tortured life. Yet in that brief time he painted 1013 pictures, 868 of them oils and 145 watercolors, including 37 self- portraits. Since there is only one photograph of Vincent, his self-portraits are quite valuable. He couldn’t afford models and so he got a good mirror and practiced by painting himself. One of six children, he was like his father, a minister, strong and stubborn and unhappy while his mother was supportive and gave him a love of art. Vincent was often thought of as crazy, suicidal, a loner and a failure. He only sold one picture in his lifetime, that of a doctor, and would be amazed that his work now sells for millions. He had a number of jobs like teacher, minister and book seller but found no financial success. He took up painting at age 26 and could also be described as passionate, brilliant, innovative and visionary but he suffered from physical and mental challenges. His first painting was a watercolor of a coal mine done in pale yellows. His first still life was called Cabbages and Clogs, an oil, in 1881. When he painted his minister father, it was a still life of an open Bible and an old prayerbook in 1885. This dark, somber period included his Potato Eaters that same year and people found his work disturbing and irritating. Even his uncle called his work frightful. Vincent went to France from ages 32-34, moving to the center of the art world, near his brother Theo who owned an art gallery and often supported him financially and emotionally. While never marrying, he had a girl friend and began painting couples in the park and cafes, with light and bright colors of yellow, pink and blue. His pictures were small and medium in size because he couldn’t afford large canvases. His style and subject matter progressed as impressionist painters influenced him and encouraged him, like John Russell, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin. Restless and bored and not liking the cold, he moved to the south of France, for Paris was too intense for his laid -back view of the world. He lived in a total of 30 different places. The high point of his career was now in Provence and Arles where he was captivated by the countryside and produced such works as Starry Nights, Irises, The Captain, The Café and the farmland and countryside. He would go off early in the morning and paint outdoors ein plein air, often completing one painting a day. He only signed his favorite paintings, like Vase with 15 Sunflowers. In his boarding room in Arles, he often painted from his bedroom window since he was a loner and knew no one. As a prolific letter writer, he often included sketches of artwork. These letters, hundreds of them, have been complied into a work called Van Gogh’s Letters. Another unknown starving artist, Paul Gauguin, came to visit as a roommate but problems arose as Vincent was a morning person and Gauguin liked to stay up late partying. Gauguin eventually returned to Paris after they argued and Van Gogh cut off part of his ear. Always struggling with mental health issues, Van Gogh admitted himself to a mental hospital with heavy metal bars on the windows. In that year he painted from his bedroom, pictures like Almond Blossoms and Irises for his mother. Now, after the hospital, he moved back to Paris and painted in blues and greens, gardens and wheat fields. He transformed himself from traditionalist to modern, expressing melancholy and extreme loneliness. He settled in another boarding house in Auberge Ravoux, living upstairs from a restaurant where you can still eat today. Van Gogh went out one morning to paint and came home with a gun shot wound. Was he shot accidently or was it suicide? He died the next day. His brother Theo inherited his works but died six months later and they are buried side by side. Theo’s wife Jo inherited them and passed the paintings and his letters to her son who donated them to the Dutch Government for a museum in 1971. Vincent Van Gogh remarked “I see what no one else sees,” “A grain of madness is the best of art” and “Great artists are not peaceful souls.” He also said of his work “I want to make art that will touch people” and “I am rich because I have found my calling and devote myself to it heart and soul.” The world is richer for the visions he saw, his command of color and the passion and pain he portrayed in every one of his 1013 contributions straight from his tortured soul. VINCENT VAN GOGH: A PAINTER FOR THE AGES The Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh only lived for thirty -seven years, and only painted for the last eleven years of that tortured life. Yet in that brief time he painted 1013 pictures, 868 of them oils and 145 watercolors, including 37 self- portraits. Since there is only one photograph of Vincent, his self-portraits are quite valuable. He couldn’t afford models and so he got a good mirror and practiced by painting himself. One of six children, he was like his father, a minister, strong and stubborn and unhappy while his mother was supportive and gave him a love of art. Vincent was often thought of as crazy, suicidal, a loner and a failure. He only sold one picture in his lifetime, that of a doctor, and would be amazed that his work now sells for millions. He had a number of jobs like teacher, minister and book seller but found no financial success. He took up painting at age 26 and could also be described as passionate, brilliant, innovative and visionary but he suffered from physical and mental challenges. His first painting was a watercolor of a coal mine done in pale yellows. His first still life was called Cabbages and Clogs, an oil, in 1881. When he painted his minister father, it was a still life of an open Bible and an old prayerbook in 1885. This dark, somber period included his Potato Eaters that same year and people found his work disturbing and irritating. Even his uncle called his work frightful. Vincent went to France from ages 32-34, moving to the center of the art world, near his brother Theo who owned an art gallery and often supported him financially and emotionally. While never marrying, he had a girl friend and began painting couples in the park and cafes, with light and bright colors of yellow, pink and blue. His pictures were small and medium in size because he couldn’t afford large canvases. His style and subject matter progressed as impressionist painters influenced him and encouraged him, like John Russell, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin. Restless and bored and not liking the cold, he moved to the south of France, for Paris was too intense for his laid -back view of the world. He lived in a total of 30 different places. The high point of his career was now in Provence and Arles where he was captivated by the countryside and produced such works as Starry Nights, Irises, The Captain, The Café and the farmland and countryside. He would go off early in the morning and paint outdoors ein plein air, often completing one painting a day. He only signed his favorite paintings, like Vase with 15 Sunflowers. In his boarding room in Arles, he often painted from his bedroom window since he was a loner and knew no one. As a prolific letter writer, he often included sketches of artwork. These letters, hundreds of them, have been complied into a work called Van Gogh’s Letters. Another unknown starving artist, Paul Gauguin, came to visit as a roommate but problems arose as Vincent was a morning person and Gauguin liked to stay up late partying. Gauguin eventually returned to Paris after they argued and Van Gogh cut off part of his ear. Always struggling with mental health issues, Van Gogh admitted himself to a mental hospital with heavy metal bars on the windows. In that year he painted from his bedroom, pictures like Almond Blossoms and Irises for his mother. Now, after the hospital, he moved back to Paris and painted in blues and greens, gardens and wheat fields. He transformed himself from traditionalist to modern, expressing melancholy and extreme loneliness. He settled in another boarding house in Auberge Ravoux, living upstairs from a restaurant where you can still eat today. Van Gogh went out one morning to paint and came home with a gun shot wound. Was he shot accidently or was it suicide? He died the next day. His brother Theo inherited his works but died six months later and they are buried side by side. Theo’s wife Jo inherited them and passed the paintings and his letters to her son who donated them to the Dutch Government for a museum in 1971. Vincent Van Gogh remarked “I see what no one else sees,” “A grain of madness is the best of art” and “Great artists are not peaceful souls.” He also said of his work “I want to make art that will touch people” and “I am rich because I have found my calling and devote myself to it heart and soul.” The world is richer for the visions he saw, his command of color and the passion and pain he portrayed in every one of his 1013 contributions straight from his tortured soul.

JERRY HERMAN: A MUSICAL OPTIMIST CELEBRATES LOVE AND LIFE

Recently the Pasadena Playhouse in California presented a musical love letter to Jerry Herman that displayed the composer and lyricist as a man filled with joy, optimism, love and timelessness. Written and conceived by Andrew Einhorn, “You I Like” is a delightful tribute to a man who wrote such musical classics as “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame” and “La Cage Aux Folles,” garnering two Tonys in the process. A quintet of singers, Andrea Ross, Ryan Vona, Lesli Margherita, Nicholas Christopher and Ashley Blanchet, offered such favorite confections as “Before the Parade Passes By,” “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and the title tune “Hello, Dolly!” that when sung by Louis Armstrong bumped the Beatles off the Billboard 100 spot where they had resided for weeks. Herman’s songs had shine and sparkle and a “glitzy optimism” according to Einhorn, a massive body of work that made Herman a master of the show tune. The only child of a couple who took him frequently to Broadway to see theater, he was particularly attached to his mother Ruth, a cheerleader of his who died of cancer when he was only 21. He said in an interview that his mother “was glamorous like Mame and witty like Dolly.” Sadly she died before he had a hit on Broadway, but she did arrange for him to have a meeting with composer Frank Loesser when he was a teenager. Loesser encouraged him to continue his writing and advised him to write his songs as if he was building a train, with a locomotive in front, followed by a red caboose that held a little surprise. After that meeting, Herman changed courses and colleges, leaving architecture for show business. Herman’s philosophy was always to find happiness in even the smallest pleasures, a trait he learned early on from his mother. One day he came home from school to find her planning a party. When asked why a party, she replied “Because it’s today.” That may explain why the tune “It’s Today” is such a glorious hit in “Mame.” Jerry Herman was always trying to transport his listeners to warm places of welcome like in the song “Shalom” from his musical “Milk and Honey,” a play about the young and strong state of Israel, a homeland of greeting with a little hello and farewell in it. In writing it, he spent time visiting and talking with the people in the land, rather than take an organized tour. When asked, he claimed his favorite work was the musical about the silent movies, “Mack and Mabel,” with the tune “Movies More Movies.” He had the unique ability to create real and vital characters and could even identify with female roles, like Gooch in “Gooch’s Song” from “Mame.” Gooch sings how she lived, and lived so well, that she opened her window so wide, too wide, that she couldn’t close it again. Even though he was not a trained musician, he was influenced by Irving Berlin and wrote his own holiday song “We Need a Little Christmas” as a Jewish composer. His songs could capture humor and stretch it far for laughs like in “Boom Buddies” in “Mame” where two frienemies defend each other no matter how hard it is to recognize the naked truth or in “If He Walked into My Life Today” also from “Mame” which struggled sentimentally with how issues were handled in the past and what might be different today. Jerry Herman called his musicals “my children.” They had a timeless quality, especially his message songs like Time Heals Everything” from “Mack and Mabel” and “The Best of Times” and “I am who I am” from “La Cage Aux Folles.” In “La Cage” he focused on acceptance between male lovers, a situation that had not been tackled before. You can still get in on the fun and sing along. Go to PlayhouseLive.org. Support the non-profit theater and entertain the whole family for $24.99 until February 7, watching as many times as you’d like. His legacy is clearly that he wanted to explore the human condition and was wholly devoted to making people smile. As Andy Einhorn stated so eloquently. Jerry Herman was a man who “loved to live and lived to love” and we are all the better for that devotion.