Vincent Van Gogh - Flowering Plum Tree - Mental Health, Genious and Japonism

Van Gogh, together with his brother Theo, participated in the craze of collecting cheap ukiyo-e prints. To quote The Guardian: “The artistic relationship between the European avant garde and Japan in the 19th century is one such cross-cultural flow. There’s plenty of evidence that the (mostly French) artists who laid the foundations of modernism were obsessed with the images of Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utagawa Kuniyoshi and other masters who took popular, brightly coloured woodblock printmaking to a zenith of sophistication in 18th and early 19th-century Japan.” We can find evidence of this very easily, as you can see Van Gogh's ukiyo-e collection portrayed in many of his artworks, that do not necessarily have anything to do with Japan. The walls of his studio were covered by an assortment of oriental prints. A good example is his incredibly famous “Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear” from 1889, painted two years after he recreated Hiroshige’s garden scenery.

Behind the artist's face, you can clearly recognize a print of Mount Fuji by Sato Torakiyo. The self portrait depicts the artist in his home, after he had returned from hospital, because he severed a piece of his ear in his first psychotic episode that was nearly fatal for him, as he was close to losing too much blood to survive. Going through such mental and also physical trauma would have taken a toll on anybody. But despite seeing the exhaustion apparent by the way he portrayed himself, clothed in a veil of dark green, the walls of his home are covered in a familiar shade of yellow, a color he loved most. A cheerful shade just like the sun, shining with life and vigor, contrasting with the depressing reality of the recent tragedy, enhanced in cheerfulness by the vibrant print from Japan behind him. Coming back home after being surrounded by grey walls of a 19th century hospital to a nicely decorated room full of his favorite art and color and getting to paint again must have been a relieving and therapeutic experience for Vincent. As van Gogh has never actually visited Japan in his lifetime, his perception of the far away land was idealized. He very much enjoyed Japanese art, and wrote that these works made him feel happy and cheerful. He decided to recreate the prints to let himself practice the style of Japanese printmakers that he had admired, but also to immerse himself in these comforting feelings even more. Mental health and the "tortured artist" phenomenon is inseparably attatched to the contemporary discussion of Vincent. I imagine that the first thing people think when they hear the name Vincent Van Gogh is not "A genious artist who painted The Starry Night" but "A crazy man that cut off his own ear and gifted it to a prostitute." We cannot deny that Vincent had suffered with a mental illness. But how did his mental state really reflect on his work and was it really suffering and madness, that made him such a great artist? And does emotional torment really improve a persons life in any way? If we look under the surface and read a bit into what Vincent was like as a person, we will see a humble man that was fascinated by nature and its connection to the spiritual, trying to understand and apply the ways of how different colors make us feel different things and emotions and what they symbolize. Yet he was also short-tempered and difficult to get close to and understand, perhaps because of his alcoholism, possibly originating because of his rough time finding his place in life. He basically failed at everything he tried to do before he started painting in his 30s. One could argue that he did not succeed even at that, considering the fact that his recognition as an artist came after his death. But as we all know, the greatest and most legendary artists of all, in any genre, do not get to experience their success in their lifetime, just like one cannot be declared a saint before their ascend to the afterlife, as such glory would be too much to bear in life. Despite not finding much traditional success in life and suffering with depression, Vincent knew and believed he was a good artist. To quote Tate: "The idea that creativity was linked to 'madness' was well known at this time, but Van Gogh rejected it. He came to 'consider madness as an illness like any other' He insistted on continuing to paint." He was not some lunatic that relied on his episodes of extreme anxiety and psychosis, or self proclaimed 'crises', to give his art meaning. And other than understanding that these notions about mental health are outdated, his fascination with collecting, copying and admiring japanese art proves this. Flowering Plum Orchard (1887) is the first of three paintings van Gogh painted after Japanese prints that he had in his collection. The artwork is based on a print by Utawaga Hiroshige, called "Plum Garden in Kameido". This printmaking style is called "ukiyo-e" in japanese, translating to "picture[s] of the floating world". The most well known artist of this movement was probably Katsushika Hokusai, who painted the famous "Great Wave off Kanagawa" that most of us imagine when thinking of Japanese prints, or even just Japan. After the deaths of the two biggest ukiyo-e masters, Hokusai and Hiroshige, the last master of the tradition, this style went into a steep decline in Japan around the 1850s, causing the mass produced artworks to make their way to Europe as mere wrappings used to protect porcelain goods from breaking. Both of these artworks, Plum Garden in Kameido and Van Goghs version, are actually hung next to each other in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, allowing visitors to easily compare and study the two side by side. To quote The Guardian: “You'd have to stand very far back and squint to think Van Gogh's versions of Hiroshige resemble the originals.”

Vincents version is vibrant and striking with bold clashes of red and yellow, imprinting his characteristic style that can be recognized right away, heavily contrasting with the gentle ombre of pink in Hiroshiges portrayal of the scene. Some could call Van Goghs version as ominous, but a different, more fitting perspective lets his iconic use of vibrant yellow depict the broad skies surrounding the garden as uplifting, even in a religious sense. Vincent wrote "I want to reach a point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply and that man feels subtly" From his appreciative works inspired by Japan, we can see Van Gogh as a man who felt both deeply and subtly, not focusing only on the dark sides of life that followed him through his journey, but also lifting himself up by surrounding himself with things, colors and people that he loved the most, helping him to deal with the brutal realities of life with mental illness. It's incredible how the interest of the west in the oriental goes on even after the decline of the culture in its original birth place. In a sense, our interest in foreign cultures keeps them alive. Vincent would definetly be delighted, that hundreds of years after his death, people in Japan are enjozing his art as much as he enjoyed the culture and beauty of their fascinating land. - Resources: Van Gogh Museum. 2021. Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige) Vincent van Gogh, 1887. [online] Available at: Ukiyo-e Search https://ukiyo-e.org/ Tate, 2019. Van Gogh – Challenging the 'Tortured Genius' Myth | Tate. [video] Available at: http://www.vggallery.com/visitors/018.htm