The Sower, 1888, Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm, Sammlung Emil Bührle, on long-term loan at Kunsthaus Zürich, Photo © Kunsthaus Zürich
A letter to a friend
I was thinking of such things, how one thing becomes something else to create yet another sensation of place.
This is the work of an artist seized by a passion to be in this world but also to discover the yet to be encountered.
Thus, the artwork invariably presents a condition of being elsewhere to its actual material presence,
so when we announce that we found this, or that painting to be moving, then this is the sense that is being touched upon.
Sense is that quality that is before and after the object of attention, a circulation that is difficult to locate in either subject or object
but instead to be discovered residing in the mist of the in-between of things and their apprehension.
Phrases such as a ‘shimmering intensity,’ ‘a sensuous shining,’ ‘radiant constellations,’ ‘trembling on the edge of the elsewhere,’
‘there and the not there of place,’ and ‘immersion into the depth of things’ might all be uttered or whispered
so as to evade the judgment that might be case of exaggeration.
It is as if the sensation of being moved, is also co-extensive with the movement of language itself.
Such phrases resist any meaningful translation and yet they occur within the net like structure woven by states of reverie.
I must qualify this letter to you, as I was just attending the exhibition of Van Gogh at The National Gallery in which on early entrance,
I preceded to the final room so I could precede backwards through the exhibition to be alone with many of the works.
Maybe I was cheating the narrative sequence that the exhibition assembled,
but anyway this act of interruption of an of an order temporal progression
appeared to give rise to a sensation of swimming within a sea of almost infinite details,
out of which the image seemed to emerge.
The intensities of such passages appeared to seize over me,
as if the close at hand was a form of secret handwriting of yet another force of transformation.
All that can be said is that such passages can dissemble the residues of stiffness,
which the everyday world composes within us to answer the demands of it.
This is why it is important that an opening is discovered in the metaphorical walking backwards.
Walking backwards is a disavowal of a determined step forward.
It is non-strategic and a refusal to place knowing in front of sensing.
In his short walking time on the earth, Van Gogh opened out networks of connections to remote cultures, distant stars,
the shudder contained within the embrace of madness,
the heat emitted within the earth, the shine, and the pulse of living entities, all of which is linked by the lubrications afforded by passion.
Van Gogh is everywhere, like a collection of strange broadcasting outposts that are scattered in the elsewhere of sense.
When he wrote his letters to his brother Theo, he was not aware how they might become letters to everyone.
He was a form (and a force) of textual and scopic openness.
I have a commitment to you as I write,
knowing that I should be writing a review instead, but words are escaping me, or rebounding back upon me.
I like the title of the exhibition because it frames a desire to understand the multiple modes of intimacy that his work might create.
The ancient Greek word poiesis comes to mind as the coming into presence of something that formerly did not exist.
We do not have to be of sober mind for the duration of being with these works,
they are of a different mode of distribution that might enter in ways that cannot be controlled.
His work is a cipher, not of dreams, but for their purification, like an emission of strange perfume circulating in a remote elsewhere.
So, I close this letter with the thought that anticipates some yet unrealised meeting.
I wonder what kind of smile might greet me and so I await it, like a fruit born of becoming.
I must apologise for not writing to you for such a long time.
Perhaps we become prone to forgetting this most delicate art.
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery Photo: © The National Gallery, London
The Passion of Van Gogh
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery is timed as a one-hundred-year interval of the first purchases of his work, but this is (surprisingly) the first exhibition of Van Gogh at The National Gallery. The title of the exhibition is significant because it indicates a relationship to an allegorical like impulse that takes his work closer to a connection to Symbolism, drawing it away from the earlier identification with the optics of Impressionism. What is being introduced is both a relationship to language that touches or is linked to a passion for the figure invested by the caress of infinity. This in turn implies relationships to be born out of the mixing of optical intensity with heat. The curators have been especially alert to all the imaginary restaging of paintings hinted at, for instance two sunflower paintings either side of the portrait that is suggested in a small diagrammatic like sketch from 1889. The other feature of this curation is the relationship to drawings which finds generous spacing throughout the visual offering. This affords for us a privileging of drawing as its own artform, and as this, these drawings occasion a shifting relationship between optical semblance, with a tactile all over relationship to rhythm, in ways that close the gap between these two main registers. Such a relationship is subject to a joining together, of both being there in place or witnessing, joined with the speed of gestural mark making. They in turn serve as a transportation by intuition, to arrest the forces that are at play in the excess of the visual. The sense of intensity, that is so evident throughout, is the product not only of passionate encounter with the objects of attention, but with a kinetic embrace of the forces out of which the visual spectacle is to be discovered. His constant returning to the same site of encounter, indicates the feeling of the surplus contained within the impulse to make a record of being-with what is offered by witnessing. This is nothing less than a process of animating faculties of both perception and imagination, which each time restores the sensation of gestural becoming or birth of presence. What is implied by this is an opening out into the realm of energetic expenditure which connects seeing with feeling within each mark that is generated. Mostly we are dulled into believing that a field is just a field, but with Van Gogh this is never the case, because even blade of grass contains a principle of connection to a greater totality. This is the reason that in moments, or even passages, he felt he was Japanese, and this is related to being close-up to things and spacings in and of the world. His great talent was never to be fixed by either identity, or by place, but to display the restlessness with the intercourse of both. Nothing is never more than, or less than, in his art because everything ripples the abundance of lifeforce freed from representational convention. Within his depictions there resides also a counter rhythm towards a mysterious and remote abstract centre, surely a spacing of bliss from which to precede.
Vincent van Gogh, Landscape near the Abbey of Montmajour, 1888 Chalk, ink, pencil, 48.3 × 59.8 cm © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers
National Gallery
14 September 2024 – 19 January 2025
致友人的一封信
最近，我一直在思考：一件事物如何轉化為另一件事物，又如何藉此創造出一種全新的地方感與觸動。
這正是藝術家的工作——他們被一種難以抗拒的熱情所驅使，不僅要扎根於這個世界，還要不懈地探索那些尚未遭遇的未知。
因此，藝術作品總是超越其物質性的存在，呈現出一種「別處」的狀態。
所以，當我們說某幅畫作感人至深，其實是因為我們的某種感知被觸動。
這種感知，如一股流動的品質，游離於物體或主體之間，既在注意的對象之前，又在其之後；
它更可能存在於事物與感知之間那朦朧的霧氣中，難以捕捉，但確實存在。
像「閃爍的強度」、「感性的光芒」、「燦爛的星座」、「在別處邊緣的顫動」、
「地方的在與不在」、「沉浸於事物深處」這些短語，或許只能低聲呢喃，
以避免被視為誇張之詞。
然而，這些短語並非單純的描述，而是語言流動中的某種回響，彷彿感動本身與語言共享一個節奏。
它們抗拒清晰的翻譯，但卻在沉思與冥想的網絡中反覆出現，像捕捉閃現的光。
我之所以寫這封信，是因為剛剛參觀了國家美術館的梵高展覽。
入場後，我沒有按照既定的順序，而是直接走向最後一個展廳，從尾到頭逆著參觀，只為能獨自與那些作品相處。
或許我違背了策展人安排的敘事秩序，但這種打破時間線的行為卻讓我彷彿置身於無數細節的海洋中，
隨著圖像逐漸從這些細節中浮現，一種沉浸感油然而生。
那些細節的力量如同攫住了我，彷彿它們是一種來自另一個世界的隱秘書寫，記錄著變化的痕跡。
我只能說，這樣的經歷能夠解構日常生活在我們身上留下的僵化痕跡，
這些痕跡來自於我們為應對世界而習得的慣性反應。
因此，發現「敞開」的契機至關重要，而這種敞開可以透過一種隱喻式的「倒退行走」實現。
倒退行走拒絕以邏輯和知識為先，它是一種反戰略的姿態，允許感知優於理解。
梵高在他短暫而濃烈的一生中，敞開了通往遙遠文化、遙遠星辰的通路，
也觸及了瘋狂擁抱中的顫抖、大地內部的熱量、生命的光澤與脈動。
這一切因他對世界的激情而彼此連結。
梵高的存在如同散布在別處的廣播站，時刻傳遞著對感知的呼喚。
當他給弟弟提奧寫信時，他無法預見，這些書信最終會成為寫給全人類的信。
他是一種形式與力量的化身，一種文本與視覺的無限敞開之存在。
我一邊寫這封信，一邊意識到也許我應該寫的是一篇評論，但文字正從我指尖逃逸，或在我腦海中回蕩無法落定。
我喜歡這場展覽的標題，因為它框定了我們對梵高作品中多種親密感的渴望。
我想起了古希臘的詞彙「poiesis」，意指將某種從未存在的事物引入世界。
在這些作品面前，我們不需要保持冷靜的理性，它們屬於一種無法被完全控制的領域，
可能會以意想不到的方式潛入我們的內心。
他的作品是一種密碼，卻不是夢的密碼，而是夢的淨化，
如同一種奇異的香氣，來自遙遠的別處，飄散、流轉、滲透。
我以對某次尚未實現的相逢的期待來結束這封信。
我想像著會有怎樣的微笑迎接我，如同等待一枚果實的成熟。
請允許我為這麼久未給你寫信而致歉，
或許，我們都在不知不覺中遺忘了這門最精緻的藝術：通信。
梵高的熱情
「梵高：詩人與情人」在國家美術館的展覽，將梵高的作品從印象派以光學為核心的傳統詮釋中解放出來，置入更廣闊的象徵主義框架之中。這場展覽揭示了梵高的藝術不僅僅是視覺層面的再現，而是一場對無限、能量與深層連結的探索。僅展覽的標題本身便帶有寓言的意涵，暗示他的畫作不只是描繪客觀世界，而是融入了一種詩意的深度與情感強度，讓觀者在其中找到與自身內在的共鳴。
此次策展的關鍵突破之一是對梵高繪畫稿的重新審視與強調。展覽中，素描作品被賦予了足夠的空間，使它們從以往被視為繪畫準備工作的附屬地位中解脫出來，成為獨立的藝術品。在這些素描中，觀者能清晰感受到梵高筆觸的原始力量與富有節奏感的動態質感。那種觸覺般的生動筆法與他畫作的視覺豐富性交相輝映，展現了一種深刻的交融關係。梵高的素描不僅是對世界的感知記錄，更是一場節奏性的創造過程，充滿著生命力的生成感。
讓觀者近距離接觸這些素描，是展覽中最引人入勝之處。它營造了一個窗口，使我們得以一窺梵高的創作過程——他如何以強烈的筆觸與節奏性的能量捕捉世界的瞬間性與鮮活性。這些素描似乎蘊藏著一種內在的運動脈動，將「觀看」與「感受」融為一體，釋放出一種難以抗拒的動能，讓觀者不僅僅是目擊者，更成為畫作能量的參與者與共鳴者。
Text by Jonathan Miles
Edited by Michelle Yu
