A few days ago I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one of the world’s largest art galleries. I spent some time in the rooms where many of the Van Gogh paintings are. Van Gogh is my favorite painter and I could spend hours sitting there in the presence of greatness.
But that’s not possible in the Met. The Van Gogh rooms are usually packed. I am not the only one who loves Van Gogh. Guides come through regularly with their groups and they always talk about Van Gogh and particularly one of his most famous paintings, A Wheatfield with Cypresses:
One of they guides told about the meaning of the cypresses, the clouds and the wheatfields. Everyone puts thoughts into Van Gogh’s brain and meaning into his brushstrokes. At the risk of offending an entire academic branch of art historians and art analysts:
I think it’s all made-up:
I don’t think Van Gogh ever sat there and thought about what symbolic meaning to put into the wheatfield and the cypress. He painted the damn things because he could not help it, he was a painter and that’s what he did. He loved the bright colors of the world, and he loved even more magnifying them and laying them thick on the canvas. The field was hot, and he wanted to make the yellow in wheat look hot. It worked. Van Gogh had passion for his work and his art. He never thought that there would be art interpreters in museums in New York that would look at his work. He never knew how great he would become after his death.
And that is a very sad thing, making Van Gogh greater yet.
I cannot turn around and walk away from A Wheatfield with Cypresses without tears welling up in my eyes.