In Search of Right Epistemological Light

Vincent van Gogh, 1885, small studio in Antwerp: walls “pinned” with reproductions of “fanciful, peculiar, unheard of” Japanese prints.  As Japanese art has begun to colour Van Gogh’s experience, he searches for the right light. 

“Last year I painted almost nothing but flowers so as to get used to colours other than grey, […] pink, soft or bright green, light blue, violet, yellow, orange, glorious red.”

A free-standing opinion is always a black-and-white figure/ground fiction-of-a-fact.

“And when I was paining landscapes […] this summer, I saw more color in them than I did before.”

Indeed, seeing reality “as is” is a skill of willingness.

“To make the journey in one go from the north to Spain […] Is not a good thing, you will not see what you should see – you must get your eyes accustomed gradually to the different light.”

Indeed, seeing reality “as is” is a skill of sensitization.

“I came to the south and threw myself into work for a thousand reasons – looking for a different light, believing  that observing nature under a brighter sky might give one a more accurate idea of the way the Japanese feel and draw.  Wanting, finally, to see this stronger sun, because one has the feeling that unless one knows it one would not be able to understand… […] Because you paint a bit of sunny wall from nature, well and truly according to our northern way of seeing things, does that prove that you have seen the people of the east?”

Indeed, seeing reality “as is” is a skill of self-deception. 

We are inescapably ourselves, each mind with its own perceptual prism, with its own subjective lens; each mind – its own, idiosyncratic point of view.  To see reality “as is” we would have to transcend our sensory apparatus, we would have to step outside our own bodily selves, and see what our eyes see.  But how can we?  What we see is thrice-filtered information: first, filtered by the specifics of our eyes, then, re-filtered by the selectively-attending specifics of our attention, and then re-re-filtered by our discursively-interpretive minds.  Sure, we may try to drop the mind-filter, we might even possibly put our historically-unique attentional sensitivities (to, say, yellow) aside, but then we still are only looking through the rods and cones of our eyes.  Reality – “as is” – is always out there. 

And so we paint models of right light…  There is no such thing-less thing...

References:

The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Penguin Classics

Van Gogh's Subjective Self-Objectification

Vincent van Gogh, September 5 or 6, 1889, in a letter to his brother:

"They say - and I am very willing to believe it - that it is difficult to know oneself - but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.  So I am working on two self-portraits at the moment - for want of another model."

Indeed, indeed.  Whereas to others, we exist only as objects (no matter how intimately known), to ourselves we exist as both subject and object. 

Question is: who's painting the portrait?  And question is: of whom?  Two sides of the same question, in fact.  The former - from within the mind, the latter - from outside the mind.  Two sides of one and the same question - but one and the same non-answer.

An ego is a concept of self, an informational self-portrait.  As such, any "self" is a self-stereotype, a subjective self-objectification, a model... for want of reality.

Van Gogh, once again, in same letter, on an unrelated note, but quite a propos, to my mind:

"So take things with a pinch of northern phlegm, and look after yourselves, both of you."

We will, we will...

From Paris to Provence

Thirst for Sun

1888: “Van Gogh was  […] talking of his wish to go south, ostensibly in search of more light and colour.”

“Vincent […] cited severe Parisian winter and his indifferent health […] as reasons for his departure: ‘It appears to me to be almost impossible to work in Paris, unless you have a retreat where you can go to recover your peace of mind and self-confidence.  Otherwise you become irrevocably dulled.’  He described himself as a worn-out Paris cab horse about to be put out to pasture.”

Snow, Not Sun

Still 1888: “Van Gogh arrived in Arles, the capital of Provence. […] he found to his amazement that the little town […] lay under a think blanket of snow.”

South-thirsty, sun-thirsty Van Gogh skips no beat: his betrayed expectations aside, he instantly zooms in on the ordinary perfection of Provence snow.  He writes: “’And the landscapes in the snow, with the white peaks against a sky as bright as the snow, were just like the winter landscapes the Japanese do.” For all that, the almond trees were already in blossom.”

Acceptance is Always In Season

Still 1888, the Provence honeymoon is over.  In a letter to his brother, Theo, Van Gogh writes: “I am sure the town of Arles was infinitely more glorious in the past.  Everything has a blighted, faded quality about it now.  Still, if you look at it for a long time, the old charm re-emerges.  And that is why I can see that I will lose absolutely nothing by staying where I am and contenting myself with watching things go by, like a spider in its web waiting for flies.  I can’t force things, and now that I’m settled in, I’ll be able to profit from all the fine days and all the opportunities for catching a real picture now and then.”

Reality is never wrong (whether you travel it from North to South or from South back to North).

Acceptance is always in season (on this globe of ours no matter where you are witnessing this life from).

Notice (the ordinary perfection of) whatever immediately is.

Resources:

Humility Check

References:

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Penguin Classics, 1996

Blade of Grass

From a letter by Vincent Van Gogh to Theo (his brother), Sept 24, 1888:

If we study Japanese art, we discover a [mind] who is undeniably wise... who spends [...] time - doing what? Studying the distance from the earth to the moon? No! Studying the politics [...]? No! [He/she] studies... a single blade of grass. <...> That is how [he/she] spends [...] life, and life is too short to do [draw] everything.

(note: I "tuned" this a bit to make it more P.C./more readable for 21st century mind and to accentuate the point I meant to extact from this passage)