Original subtitles

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years, we have been filming the biggest exhibitions,

art galleries and museums in the world

about some of the greatest artists and art in history.

Not only do we record landmark shows,

but we also secure privileged access behind the scenes.

We then use this as a springboard to take a broader look

at extraordinary artists.

Recently, a hugely popular exhibition began in Japan

and then made its way to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

It covered a story that, perhaps, is not that well known.

Arguably, the world's favourite artist,

Vincent van Gogh can't be understood

unless one explores and comprehends the impact and influence

of Japanese art on mid-19th century artists

like Monet or Degas, and, in particular, Van Gogh.

Paintings that are now world favourites

and worth hundreds of millions of dollars

emerged from his love of a culture and an art

that he had never seen in Japan itself.

But he'd confronted and collected

in the art galleries of Paris and elsewhere.

It was a meeting that utterly changed Van Gogh

and to understand him and his work,

you have to understand his love of Japan.

VAN GOGH: "My dear Theo,

"I envy the Japanese,

"The extreme clarity that everything in their work has.

"It's never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily.

"Their work is as simple as breathing,

"and they do a figure with a few confident strokes,

"with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat.

"I must manage to do a figure with a few strokes.

"That will keep me busy all winter.

"Once I have that,

"I will be able to do people strolling along the boulevards,

"the streets, a host of new subjects.

"Ever yours, Vincent."

Van Gogh never travelled to Japan,

yet he had a profound admiration for the art from this country,

and he thought a lot about Japan,

about Japanese art, about Japanese artists.

But it was, of course, all based on the prints,

the coloured woodblock prints that he collected and that he owned.

In a way he constructed his own image of Japan,

and that also shaped his way of looking,

of making art inspired by Japanese prints.

This exhibition, for many people, is a revelation because, of course,

not everybody knows that he was so much influenced by this art.

But also he was able to somehow change his style

in a very fundamental way.

It's so natural to make an exhibition about Van Gogh and Japan

because, he himself says,

that it's his biggest inspiration source

in the year of 1888 and that's, of course,

the greatest period of his artistic life.

Van Gogh started to copy Japanese prints,

and he imitated the Japanese motifs in the beginning.

And slowly, he went to assimilate

Japanese styles and Japanese devices.

And he tried to borrow some Japanese compositional devices,

very flat colours and high horizons, like that.

Not only at Van Gogh's time, which was the 1880s,

but already from the 1860s,

artists had been fascinated by Japanese art.

Artists like Whistler, Monet, Manet, Rodin, Degas,

they all had looked at Japanese art

as a completely new way of looking at the world.

Van Gogh was also reading about Japan and Japanese art.

For example, the book by Louis Gonse, L'Art Japonais.

This was a very important publication on Japanese art.

It was the first French book on Japanese art,

which described extensively different art forms from Japan,

so also decorative arts, painting, drawing.

And there was a whole chapter on Hokusai, for example,

who was already, at the time, the most famous Japanese artist.

Another important book for Van Gogh

was Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti,

a French novelist who had been travelling in Japan

and describes the customs and the landscape in Japan.

And Van Gogh, he was very enthusiastic about this book.

He would have been one of the few artists

who would have not been surprised by Japanese art.

As the Netherlands had had a long relationship with Japan,

he would have known about Japanese culture to a certain extent.

He would have seen objects.

Very fascinated by this vocabulary

as well as the subject matter of Japanese art.

That allowed him to associate in a new way.

I think Van Gogh was the most influenced by Japanese art.

Not only in the style and not only in the subject, and devices,

but also in his own ideals.

And that's quite an extraordinary phenomenon.

And Van Gogh idealised Japan, idealised Japanese people

and Japanese painters.

That Japanese dream played a very crucial role

for Van Gogh's artistic career.

That's quite different from other artists.

From around 1600 to 1868,

Japan was ruled by a feudal military government, the Tokugawa shogunate.

This era is also known as the Edo period

and it was a time of relative stability,

maintained, firstly, by suppressing social unrest.

And, secondly, by keeping the country closed to foreigners.

Japan did not want to be influenced by the West,

especially not by Catholicism.

A wealthy Japanese merchant class emerged,

enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle, known as Ukiyo,

translated into English as "The Floating World".

They patronised the arts

and indulged in the services of high-class courtesans called oiran,

and female entertainers known as geisha.

Some limited trading did occur

with countries like China, Korea and the Netherlands,

through the trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki.

But others like America, Russia and most of Western Europe

remained firmly excluded from this lucrative market.

But by the middle of the 19th century,

change was in the air.

1853, when Van Gogh was born,

exactly the same year Commodore Perry from America,

he came to Japan and forced Japan to open the doors to foreign countries.

That was a very symbolic year for Japanese history,

and also for Van Gogh himself.

The Edo period ended in the summer of 1868

shortly after the accession of Emperor Meiji.

He had seized power from the Shogun

and started a process of modernisation.

This became known as known as the Meiji period,

which lasted until 1912.

The young Emperor Meiji, outward-looking and enlightened,

urged Japanese people to learn from the West

and to adopt Western practices.

They had a double agenda.

They were keen on collecting information from the western world.

They wanted to know about family life,

they wanted to know about military organisation,

social organisation, about issues like marriage,

and also infrastructure.

But they always had a complicated attitude towards the foreigner

and his potential influence.

This opening of the borders allowed not only for trade,

but, in particular, also for objects, art objects,

to come out of the country and into the Western world.

And it was a way of establishing really serious collections.

There was never a journal, there was never a newspaper,

which didn't have at least an ad about something Japanese in it.

It was part of the cultural landscape that you could not avoid.

Japanese art, of course,

influenced many artists in the second half of the 19th century.

Van Gogh was believing that he was part of a decadent society

and he was longing for a simpler society.

He believed that Japan stood for that kind of society

and that this was also linked to the kind of art that they made.

It was simpler.

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853

in the rural Dutch village of Zundert

where his father was the local Protestant pastor.

He was the eldest of six children

and from the age of 16, worked in his uncle's art business,

Goupil & Company, in The Hague, London and ultimately, Paris.

Every day he was exposed to a diverse range of artwork.

But by his early 20s,

Van Gogh had become increasingly disillusioned with this life

and sought solace in reading intellectual literature

and writing religious texts.

He took up lay preaching in England and the Borinage region in Belgium.

His austere ways and stoic evangelism led to his dismissal

and that provoked a deep despair.

"My dear Theo,

"when you say in your last letter

"what a riddle there is in nature, I echo your words.

"Life in the abstract is already a riddle,

"reality turns it into a riddle within a riddle.

"And who are we to solve it?

"All the same, we ourselves form a particle of it,

"of the society of which we ask,

"where is it going, to the devil or to God?"

Vincent van Gogh always had a close relationship

with his younger brother, Theo, to whom he wrote constantly.

In these detailed and revealing letters,

they shared opinions on life, art and literature.

Theo was constantly concerned about his brother's poor finances

and failing health.

He encouraged him to find a new purpose in life.

At the age of 27, Vincent decided to pursue a career as an artist.

We have to remember that he only worked as an artist for ten years.

He had been working in the Netherlands for five years,

drawing for several years before even starting to paint.

And when he painted, he painted mainly in dark colours.

He was very much influenced by, for example, the Barbizon School,

the French realistic landscape painters, peasant painters,

such as Jean-Francois Millet.

And then, because he realised

that he needed to find a new way for his art

that he wouldn't be able to sell his works

and to have the necessary contact with other artists,

he moved to Antwerp to be in a big city, again.

And to be able to look at other art, to be in contact with other artists.

"My dear Theo,

"these docks are one huge Japonaiserie.

"Fantastic, singular, strange.

"At least, one can see them like that.

"I would like to walk with you there

"to find out whether we look at things the same way.

"One could do anything there, townscapes,

"figures of the most diverse character,

"the ships as the central subject with water and sky

in delicate grey. "But above all, Japonaiseries.

"I mean, the figures there are always in motion.

"One sees them in the most peculiar settings,

"everything fantastic.

"And interesting contrasts keep appearing out of their own accord.

"My studio's quite tolerable,

"mainly because I've pinned a set of Japanese prints

"on the walls that I find very diverting.

"You know, those little female figures in gardens

"or on the shore,

"horsemen, flowers, gnarled thorn branches."

The word ukiyo-e consists of two parts.

"Ukiyo", which translates as the floating world,

or the fleeting moment.

And "e" is an extension, which means "image of".

We often describe ukiyo-e of being the product of the ukiyo-e quartet,

which means the involvement of the publisher, the artist,

the block cutter and the printer.

HE SPEAKS JAPANESE

The whole interest in Japonisme, in Japan,

was, in a way, almost like a fashion

that grew pretty suddenly because these objects came on the market,

were promoted, were collected, were hotly sought after.

Japonisme could be found in many, many different levels.

There was, of course, the collecting classes,

the rich people who could afford to buy and adorn their houses,

but you could also go to the department store

and find Japanese fans.

Siegfried Bing, for example, was an art dealer

who specialised in Asian objects,

in particular, also Japanese, but not only.

But he also wrote about Japanese art,

with his journal Le Japon Artistique,

which became really important.

It talked about Japan, described the landscapes.

Suddenly, people could put an image to it

that was not only a picture or a reproduction in a journal.

Another art dealer was Hayashi,

who also dealt with Japanese objects,

and there were enough wealthy collectors of Japanese art

in Paris at the time.

Hayashi wrote about the spring of Japan,

and he compared that to Italy,

and very bright colour, and bright sunlight.

And when cherry blossoms are blossoming,

then the whole mountain looks like a pink cloud,

or something like that.

I think that was enough for European people

to dream about the paradise of the Far East.

In 1886, Van Gogh decided that he needed to be at the centre

of the artistic world - Paris.

He arrived in Montmartre and moved in with his brother Theo

who was now building a reputation as an influential dealer,

working with young artists.

Van Gogh immersed himself in current artistic developments,

looking at impressionism

and experimenting with neo-impressionist techniques

such as pointillism which was considered avant-garde.

But another rich source of inspiration for these artists,

and a constant talking point, was Japonisme.

Always looking for ways to generate income,

and recognising the popularity of Japanese art,

Van Gogh decided on a plan to buy a large quantity of Japanese prints

from the dealer Siegfried Bing in order to then sell them at a profit.

We know that from his letters

that he buys 660 prints and he pays 100 francs for them.

Or, actually, he doesn't pay 100 francs,

because he pays only ten and then later on he says to his brother,

"You should go back to Siegfried Bing

"and pay the rest of it, because we should keep this collection."

He has then realised that it's important material for artists,

not just for himself, but also for other artists to work with.

And after this decision to buy this whole lot of Japanese prints,

he then exhibits them in the cafe that he frequents,

which is the cafe of his then lover, Agostina Segatori.

He puts them on the walls there and he hopes to sell them,

but that doesn't work out, so then he keeps them.

He also gives some away to artists, to friends,

and he's saying they are also learning from it,

so it's a very valuable thing after all.

He then realised that there had to be something else,

that in order to be a part of that you couldn't just use brush stroke

and colour, and paint outside.

There was so much more going on,

that if you had to distinguish yourself somehow,

you needed to create a niche,

a special way of connecting to something that was utterly modern.

One of the things that was perfect for that was, actually,

Japanese art.

From the summer of 1887, you can really see something new happening.

That had to do also with the new friends he was making

or hanging out with more often,

like Emile Bernard or also Paul Gauguin.

Also where he starts to think about new ways

of creating imagery.

And it starts with a spectacular painting

and that is The Courtesan.

He takes different images, different details from various Japanese prints

and puts them together.

So he sees a magazine cover with the woman on it.

He takes it, squares it,

like the most traditional way of making a copy,

and then puts it on canvas, enlarging it.

Then around it he uses various imagery of landscapes,

very typically cliche-like Japanese motifs.

What he does, and what makes it, I think,

such a strong and imposing picture, is not only its size,

which is very ambitious for him at that time,

but also the fact that he uses these intense colours

which were not in the originals.

He really brightens up.

In particular, The Courtesan is just an explosion of colour, almost.

And he uses a very strong and distinct brushstroke in there.

Very graphic, a lot of impasto, you have a sense of paint,

which is all very different from the flatness of the Japanese prints.

And it is, sort of, a tour de force almost

of trying out what you can do when you use direct sources

in your work, as if you're making a statement about,

"OK, here I am, and now I'm going to try and be a Japoniste."

Making copies after, for example,

the Old Masters was a very common way of learning for artists,

also, at the art academies.

So when he's looking at Japanese prints

and he's trying to unravel their way of working,

doing copies helps him get acquainted with this new style.

And you could look at them as imitations, but, of course,

they are much more than that

because he's also adding his own colours, his own brushstroke.

He's adding elements from other prints,

so he's making a kind of new thing from these copies.

It's really about making it his own.

"I saw Pere Tanguy, yesterday.

"And he put a canvas I had just done in his window.

"I've done four since you left, and I have a big one on the go.

"I'm well aware that these big, long canvases are hard to sell,

"but, in time, people will see

"that there's open air and good cheer in them.

"Now, the whole lot will make a decoration

"for a dining room or a house in the country.

While in Paris, Vincent refined his technique

and absorbed the many artistic influences the city had to offer.

He actively involved himself with other artists

and experimented with materials, colour, perspective and composition.

His passion and intensity sometimes overwhelmed him.

After a series of failed ventures, rejections and disappointments,

he became embittered with life in the city.

Van Gogh sought a change and a quieter existence.

So he decided to leave Paris

in search of new subjects and new inspiration.

In February, 1888, he pinned some Japanese prints

to the wall of Theo's apartment as a gift

and headed to Provence in the south of France.

"My dear Theo,

"Arles doesn't seem any bigger than Breda or Mons to me.

"Before reaching Tarascon, I noticed some magnificent scenery,

"huge yellow rocks, oddly jumbled together,

"with the most imposing shapes.

"In the small valleys between these rocks

"there were rows of little round trees

"with olive-green or grey-green foliage,

"which could well be lemon trees.

"But here in Arles, the land seems flat.

"I noticed some magnificent plots of red earth planted with vines,

"with mountains in the background of the most delicate lilac.

"And the landscape under the snow

"with the white peaks against a sky as bright as the snow

"was just like the winter landscapes "the Japanese did."

The south of France is very different from Japan,

but when you look at all the images that he had in mind,

and you look at the landscape around Arles,

which is also quite flat landscapes, with hills in the background

or mountains in the background.

And, of course, the intensity of the colours,

which is very different than in the north,

with more warmer colours,

this is something that he liked in the prints.

So he's very happy to find himself in this country and in nature,

which reminds him so much of nature in the Japanese prints.

What he did do was to search for colourful motifs in the south

and then he was imitating it. So, you see, in the beginning,

he only took the motif of the orchards,

but they do not have much in common

with his search for a flat kind of effect,

because the motifs themselves are difficult to combine

with flat motifs.

Trees blossoming. So it's not there yet.

He had to conquer that, you could say.

"My dear Bernard,

"having promised to write you,

"I want to begin by telling you that this part of the world

"seems to me as beautiful as Japan for the clearness of the atmosphere

"and the gay colour effects.

"The stretches of water make patches of a beautiful emerald

"and a rich blue in the landscapes, as we see it in the Japanese prints.

"Pale orange sunsets making the fields look blue.

"Glorious yellow suns."

He's making paintings

in which you can really see the Japanese influence reflected,

but he's incorporated it into his own style.

He's applying much stronger colours.

That's also, of course, because of the light in the south.

But also because these prints have helped him

to look at reality in another way.

He still always bases his work on reality.

He puts his easel in front of his subject,

and he's painting that, the landscape or the portrait.

But the way the Japanese prints are made

in very large planes of colours, with very strong lines,

in a way it's about simplifying your compositions

and making them stronger. It's about choosing very strong,

even garish colours that are not necessarily realistic.

And that adds to the strength of the painting,

and this is something that he very much learns from these examples.

Of course, there's many influences on his work,

but this was one that really fitted with what he wanted,

what he was striving for.

Portraiture became very important subject matter

for Van Gogh in Arles.

Very different from earlier.

And now, it was the modern portrait that he was doing.

Modern portrait, of course, had to be, at least in large part,

Japoniste, because that was the modernity.

So what does one do?

A - one has maybe an exotic subject matter,

which was perfect in The Zouave

a soldier from a regiment, which had very colourful outfits,

was very dashing and very intense,

using flat areas of colour that recall, in a way,

the Japanese prints that he had been studying

from his memory now, because he had very few Japanese objects with him.

They were sent to him later by his brother.

The Zouave was from a regiment

where they had really dashing and colourful costumes, as well,

so what he saw was translated in this way.

But more interesting are those portraits

where he brings the story of Japan

into the painting he makes of someone from Provence.

And the grand example of this is, of course, La Mousme.

"My dear Theo,

"now, if you know what a mousme is,

"you'll know when you've read Loti's Madame Chrysantheme,

"I've just painted one.

"It took me my whole week.

"I wasn't able to do anything else, having been not too well, again.

"That's what annoys me. If I'd been well,

"I'd have knocked off some more landscapes in between times.

"But in order to finish off my Mousme,

"I had to save my mental powers.

"A mousme is a Japanese girl.

"Provencale, in this case, aged between 12 and 14.

"That makes two figures, The Zouave and her, that I have.

When he describes it, he really describes the Japanese story

that he wants to evoke in that work.

Another example of this bringing together a Japanese story

with portraits is, of course, the famous self-portrait, his Bonze.

"My dear Gauguin,

"I have a portrait of myself, all ash-coloured.

"The ashy colour that comes from mixing Veronese with orange lead,

"on a pale background of uniform Veronese,

"with a red-brown garment.

"But exaggerating my personality, also.

"I looked more for the character of a bonze,

"a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha."

While in Arles, Vincent started to dream about an artist colony,

hoping other artists would join him,

so they could work and discuss art together.

After some persuasion by Theo,

Paul Gauguin made the journey to Arles

to stay with Van Gogh in his Yellow House.

In preparation for his arrival,

an excited Van Gogh made several paintings to decorate the walls,

such as The Sunflowers and The Bedroom.

For two months, they drank and ate together

and painted the same models side by side.

Unfortunately, it didn't end well.

Vincent van Gogh's regime was too intense for Gauguin

and they had a huge argument,

ending with Van Gogh cutting off his left ear in a drunken rage.

Gauguin left Arles, and after a period in hospital,

Vincent van Gogh decided to check himself into an asylum

in Saint-Remy, to recover.

In Saint-Remy,

Japan continues to be a very important force

as an inspiration for the work he does.

When we think of the close-up views of nature that he does,

which relate directly to his reading of Bing's Le Japon Artistique,

where Bing writes elaborately and very beautifully

about the respect of the Japanese artists for seeing a blade of grass,

something that Van Gogh picks up.

He takes these ideas with him

and explores them in the garden of the asylum, in motifs,

very importantly, of cut-off trees,

where you see only the tree trunk being focused,

on the ground, looking at the small detail of nature.

He emerges from this period of illness

and creates these amazing works of art.

After a year in the asylum,

Van Gogh felt strong enough to discharge himself

and move back closer to Theo.

Paris was considered too risky

for Van Gogh's fragile state of mind,

but the nearby rural village of Auvers-sur-Oise seemed suitable.

The area was popular with artists like Pissarro and Cezanne.

Theo knew of a homeopathic doctor and artist there called Paul Gachet

who agreed to keep an eye on Vincent.

After the breakdown in Arles, his Japanese dream was over.

But still, he was interested in Japanese art.

And in Auvers-sur-Oise

he went to see the Japanese prints exhibitions in Paris,

in Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

So he wanted to know real Japan.

That's different from the Japanese dreams.

But he was still trying to keep contact with Japan,

even his last months.

Auvers was, of course, the place where Van Gogh passed away,

where he's buried.

After he passed away and after Gachet passed away,

the heritage of Van Gogh was kept by Gachet Junior.

The Japanese became fascinated

by Van Gogh in the early 20th century

when first a partial translation of the letters

appeared in print in Japan.

And soon afterwards, images of his work arrived,

often reproduced in journals in black and white.

That is how the first images of Van Gogh's painting

were introduced to the Japanese audience.

At the time, right after Van Gogh's death,

his fame began to rise meteorically.

It's extraordinary.

Of course, very convenient, and this sounds terrible,

but his suicide, the madness,

that gave a grand background for the 19th century idea of genius.

Then Emile Bernard published the letters.

So the machine, so to speak, the marketing machine, got going.

Anyone looking for new art,

looking for contemporary developments,

could not avoid Van Gogh.

HE SPEAKS JAPANESE

HE SPEAKS JAPANESE

SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE

Van Gogh idealised Japan, and after some decades,

the Japanese idealised Van Gogh.

And that kind mutual idealisation, or misunderstanding

that can happen in certain phases of a cultural context.

Today, the reaction of the Japanese public

is not the same as 50 years ago.

But still, Van Gogh is a kind of icon,

and also idealised person, the most popular artist in Japan.

Europe is still admiring Hokusai. So it's a kind of spiral.

It's not in the same way, but still going around and around,

and they're just creating what they want to see in other cultures.

I don't think that he would have necessarily known Japanese artists,

in the same way as he never wanted to go to Japan.

It was a concept, an idea.

He never wanted to go, he didn't need to,

because what he needed was just a construct

with which he could work to develop his own oeuvre

and the meaning of it.

He then brought to life something which didn't exist,

but which I think then allowed one to relate with one's own emotions

or one's own imagination.

And that's a great part of the attraction of Van Gogh's work.

"My dear brother,

"you know that I came to the south

"and threw myself into work for a thousand reasons.

"To want to see another light,

"to believe that looking at nature under a brighter sky

"can give us a more accurate idea

"of the Japanese way of feeling and drawing.

"Wanting, finally, to see this stronger sun,

"because one feels that without knowing it

"one couldn't understand the paintings of Delacroix

"from the point of view of execution, technique.

"And because one feels that the colours of the prism

"are veiled in mist in the north.

"All of this remains somewhat true."

Subtitles by ITV SignPost