Van Gogh

Summary

Dominique Pagani often returns to a sentence of Van Gogh's: "We can only make our paintings speak." He sets it against interpretation: the point is to make the text speak rather than speak about it1, and the idea must be externalised in the work2. He mentions the move to Arles several times: the painter goes there looking for the harsh, vivid light of the South, tired of blur, in the full force of the mistral34. In painting, he links Van Gogh with gradation, which he sets against Gauguin's line5. He compares Van Gogh's stars swirling over the Rhône with "Nuit rhénane", and he speaks of coloured water "à la Van Gogh" in connection with Nerval. He also counts him among those who lived the aesthetic adventure to the end and went under, as a figure of modern madness6. Finally, he finds the way Heidegger comments on Van Gogh's peasant shoes obscene7.

1. 1#5.9 Kafka, “An Imperial Message”29 Jul 2019 · 16:37
2. 2Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents22 Dec 2023 · 2:08:54
3. 3#2.6 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 1:42:27
4. 4#4.6 Angélique (by Nerval)15 Mar 2018 · 52:11
5. 5#17 Interpretation25 Mar 2021 · 39:59
6. 6Introduction to the upcoming workshops23 Mar 2020 · 1:24:30
7. 7Panzer-philosophy against the cogito: neo-fascism or the ideology of nature (Heidegger, Descartes)5 Mar 2022 · 7:26

Summary produced automatically from 21 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.